The word fell comically from his lips, but Sharlee, leaning against the shut door, looked at him with grave sympathy in her eyes.
"Mr. Queed, if you had tried to write nursery rhymes and—failed, would you have taken it to heart?"
"Never mind arguing it. In fact, I don't know that I could explain it to you in a thoroughly logical and convincing way. The central fact, the concrete thing, is that I do object most decidedly. I have spent too much time in equipping myself to express valuable ideas in discriminating language to be kicked out of a second-rate newspaper office like an incompetent office-boy. Of course I shall not submit to it."
"Do you care to tell me what you mean to do?"
"Do!" He hit the door-post a sudden blow with an unexpectedly large hand. "I shall have myself elected editor of the Post."
"But—but—but—" said the girl, taken aback by the largeness of this order—"But you don't expect to oust Colonel Cowles?"
"We are not necessarily speaking of to-morrow or next day. An actuary will tell you that I am likely to outlive Colonel Cowles. I mean, first, to have my dismissal recalled, and, second, to be made regular assistant editor at three times my present salary. That is my immediate reply to the directors of the Post. I am willing to let the editorship wait till old Cowles dies."
"Tell me," said Sharlee, "would you personally like to be editor of the Post?"
"Like it! I'll resign the day after they elect me. Call it sheer wounded vanity—anything you like! The name makes no difference. I know only that I will have the editorship for a day—and all for the worthless pleasure of pitching it in their faces." He looked past her out of the window, and his light gray eyes filled with an indescribable bitterness. "And to have the editorship," he thought out loud, "I must unlearn everything that I know about writing, and deliberately learn to write like a demagogic ass."
Sharlee tapped the calcimine with her pointed fingernails. He spoke, as ever, with overweening confidence, but she knew that he would never win any editorship in this spirit. He was going at the quest with a new burst of intellectual contempt, though it was this very intellectual contempt that had led to his downfall.