“Ah? You don’t build up much of a character for yourself as prospective employee.”
“If I join The Patriot staff I shall probably disappear once a month or so on a spree.”
“Why should you join The Patriot staff? That is what you fail to make clear to me.”
“Reference, Mr. Russell Edmonds,” returned the other negligently.
“You two aren’t getting anywhere with all this chatter,” growled the reference. “Come, Severance; talk turkey, as you did to me.”
“I don’t want to talk,” objected the other in his gentle, scholarly accents. “I want to look about: to diagnose the trouble in the news department.”
“What do you suspect the trouble to be?” asked Banneker.
“Oh, the universal difficulty. Lack of brains.”
Banneker laughed, but without relish. “We pay enough for what we’ve got. It ought to be good quality.”
“You pay not wisely but too well. My own princely emolument as a prop of piety is thirty-five dollars a week.”