“You haven’t quit.”
“Perhaps I’m not honest enough or perhaps I’m too cowardly,” retorted the gloomy Burt.
Banneker smiled. Though the other was nearly two years his senior, he felt immeasurably the elder. There is about the true reporter type an infinitely youthful quality; attractive and touching; the eternal juvenile, which, being once outgrown with its facile and evanescent enthusiasms, leaves the expert declining into the hack. Beside this prematurely weary example of a swift and precarious success, Banneker was mature of character and standard. Nevertheless, the seasoned journalist was steeped in knowledge which the tyro craved.
“What would you do,” Banneker asked, “if you were sent out to write a story absolutely opposed to something you believed right; political, for instance?”
“I don’t write politics. That’s a specialty.”
“Who does?”
“‘Parson’ Gale.”
“Does he believe in everything The Ledger stands for?”
“Certainly. In office hours. For and in consideration of one hundred and twenty-five dollars weekly, duly and regularly paid.”
“Outside of office hours, then.”