“You know, I—I almost like that young fool.”
“So do I.”
“Well, what are we going to do?”
“Pull him through whether he wants our help or not. We can fight him for the Franchise Bill after the war.”
“Go to it!” returned the president of the Fenchester Public Utilities Company with unwonted energy and slang.
As the first fruits of that confabulation between two of Jeremy Robson’s oldest enemies The Guardian received on the following day a contract from the P.-U. for advertising space amounting to sixteen hundred dollars a year. Jeremy reckoned that with grim satisfaction, as giving the paper a few days more of life. On the following morning there came a far more important help in the form of ‘a brief and characteristic note from Magnus Laurens, the pith of which was in these sentences:
I hope you will accept my sincere apologies. Enclosed find contract with the Oak Lodge Pulp Company, which, I have reason to believe, was made under a misapprehension as to quality of paper. Kindly make out new contract at three cents and three quarters if acceptable.
Andy Galpin’s philosophical estimate—“Every bit as real an American, when it comes to the pinch”—reverted to Jeremy’s mind. A sudden humility tempered his spirit. He felt that The Guardian was a pretty big thing and he a pretty small one. Well, in what time remained he would fight with a new vigor and for a broader ideal. It would not be long. Magnus Laurens’s generosity meant only a respite; perhaps two or three months extra of fighting the good fight. In the owner’s heart was no self-deception as to the inevitable outcome. Meantime the paper might yet beat Martin Embree and save Centralia from the disgrace of sending the chosen prophet of Deutschtum to the United States Senate.
And just for itself, how well worth fighting for and with to the finish was the battered, gallant old Guardian! Jeremy thought of his paper as a Captain might think of his ship staggering, unconquered but hopeless, through her last storm to her last port; thought of her with that sort of devotion, of passion. And the precious freight of hope and faith and belief that she carried, the loyal confidence of the simple, clean, honest people for whom he had made the paper!
Strange and unexpected accessions had come to that number; none stronger than the stubborn and violent jeweler, Bernard Stockmuller, who had abused Jeremy on the street after the first trouble with the Deutscher Club.