“Too good. It’s got too much guts.”
Jeremy Robson repeated the rugged Saxon word in a tone of uncomprehending inquiry.
“Too American,” expounded the other. “Too much ‘This-is-our-country-and-don’t-you-forget-it’ in it.”
“Show me one line where—”
“It’s between the lines. You could n’t keep it out with barbed wire. You ’re no reporter,” said Andrew Galpin severely. “What d’ you think you’re writing for The Record? Poetry?”
“Look here!” said the bewildered Robson. “You just said it was good and now—”
“And now I’m telling you it’s rotten. Punk! As newspaper work, for The Record. Or any other paper hereabouts on this great and glorious German day. Why, it’d spoil the breakfast beer of every good and superior citizen of German birth and extraction that read it.”
“Then they are n’t any sort of Americans if they can’t stand that!”
“‘Bah’ said Mary’s little lamb to Mary,” observed Mr. Galpin impolitely. “Who said they were Americans? Did you hear much American at that meeting? Did you catch any loud and frenzied cheering for the red, white, and blue, or get your eyesight overcrowded with photographs of the American eagle? Did you mistake the picture of the gent with the wild-boar whiskerines for a new photo of His Excellency, the President of the United States? Did you—”
“Oh, cut it!” said the exasperated Robson.