“Do you expect to get copy for nothing?” inquired the astonished and annoyed Banneker.
“If it comes to that,” retorted the sharp-featured young man at the editorial desk, “you’re the one that’s getting something for nothing.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Come off! This is red-hot advertising matter for Betty Raleigh, and you know it. Why, I ought to charge a coupla hundred for running it at all. But you being a newspaper man and the stuff being so snappy, I’m willing to make an exception. Besides, you’re a friend of Raleigh’s, ain’t you? Well—‘nuff said!”
It was upon the tip of Banneker’s tongue to demand the copy back. Then he bethought himself of Betty’s disappointment. The thing was well done. If he had been a thousand miles short of giving even a hint of the real Betty—who was a good deal of a person—at least he had embodied much of the light and frivolous charm which was her stage stock-in-trade, and what her public wanted. He owed her that much, anyhow.
“All right,” he said shortly.
He left, and on the street-car immersed himself in some disillusioning calculations. Suppose he did sell the rejected story to The Bon Vivant. One hundred dollars, he had learned, was the standard price paid by that frugal magazine; that would not recompense him for the time bestowed upon it. He could have made more by writing “specials” for the Sunday paper. And on top of that to find that a really brilliant piece of interviewing had brought him in nothing more substantial than congratulations and the sense of a good turn done for a friend!
The magazine field, he began to suspect, might prove to be arid land.