Yet The Guardian was Jeremy’s very own. He felt for it the proprietary pride and interest of a man with a growing business and a growing influence to wield, and, added to that the affection of a child for a toy machine—which actually goes! He coddled his paper and petted it, and treated it, when he could, to new and better equipment, and awoke one day to the unpleasant realization that the editorials which he so enjoyed writing, and the growing, widening response to which constituted his most satisfactory reward, were physically a blotch and a blur and an affront to the staggering and baffled eye. The Guardian needed a new dress and needed it badly!
Now the garmenture of a newspaper is of a costliness to make Paquin, Caillot, and their Parisian congeners of the golden needle appear like unto ragpickers, when the bills come in. Jeremy bought The Guardian a new dress of type. It made a hideous hole, a chasm, an abyss in the loan negotiated from the Trust Company. But the paper became a festival to the proud eye of its owner. Galpin helped salve his chief’s conscience by agreeing that they would have had to do it sooner or later anyway.
Well advised of the loan, the status of the paper’s finances, and the new plunge, Montrose Clark and his legal satellite, Judge Dana, held consultation. Now, they decided, was the providentially appointed time for trying out the transfer ordinance in the City Council. The Guardian, whose opposition they had feared, had put itself in a position where it must “be good.”
“That young cub,” said Montrose Clark confidently, “will have to come into line.”
“With management. With careful management,” amended Judge Dana.
“Anyway!” returned the public utilitarian. “He’ll need every cent he can get and when he sees five or six hundred dollars as his share of our advertising campaign of education, with more to follow, he’ll take his orders like the others. I’ll send for him in a day or two.”
“What, again?” said Judge Dana.
The puffy jowl of Montrose Clark deepened in color. “I shall not tolerate any more of his impudence,” he declared. “He will come when sent for or—”
“Now, Mr. Clark, this is a case for diplomacy.”
“For you, you mean, Dana.”