He watched Henry, to see if this remark had an effect. It had none. He nibbed his hand slowly back and forth across his forehead.
'The fact is,' he remarked, 'they've landed on us. Pretty hard. The advertisers. Just about all Simpson Street. It's a sort of boycott, apparently. Takes out two-thirds of our advertising. And Weston called my note—that two hundred and forty-eight—for paper. Simply charged it up against our account. Pretty dam' high-handed, I call it!'
His voice was rising. He sprang up, paced the floor.
'They're showing fight,' he ran on. 'We've got to lick 'em. That's my way—start at the drop of the hat. What's a little advertising! Get readers—that's the real trick of it. We'll lick 'em with circulation, that's what we'll do!'
He stood over Henry's desk; even pounded it. The boy didn't seem to get it, even now. He was hardly listening. With his own money at stake. But McGibbon was finding him like that; queer gaps on the practical side. No money sense whatever!
'Henry,' he was crying now, 'it's up to you. You're a genius. It's sheer waste to use you on fool receptions. Write, man! WRITE! Let yourself go. Anything—sketches, verse, stories! Let's give 'em what they don't look for in a country paper. Like the old Burlington Hawkeye and that fellow Brann. And the paper in Lahore that nobody would ever have heard of if Kipling hadn't written prose and verse to fill in, here and there. He was a kid, too. There's always, somewhere, a little paper that's famous because a man can write. Why shouldn't it be us! Us! Right up here over the meat-market. Why, we can make the little old Gleaner known from coast to coast. We can put Sunbury on the map. Just with your pen, my boy! With your pen! And then where'll old Weston be! Where'll these little two-bit advertisers be!'
He spread his thin hands in a gesture of triumph. Henry looked up now; slowly pushed back his chair; said, in a weak voice, 'I'm tired. Guess I'd better get along;' and walked out.
McGibbon stared after him, his mouth literally open.
6
Back of the old Parmenter place the barn was dark. Henry felt relief. He was tingling with excitement. He couldn't move slowly. His fists were clenched. Every nerve in his body was strung tight.