"What does she think? Does she feel that way about it?"
Kittrell laughed, not cynically now, but uneasily and with embarrassment, for Clayton's blue eyes were on him, those eyes that could look into men and understand them so.
"Of course you know," Kittrell went on nervously, "there is nothing personal in this. We newspaper fellows simply do what we are told; we obey orders like soldiers, you know. With the policy of the paper we have nothing to do. Just like Dick Jennings, who was a red-hot free-trader and used to write free-trade editorials for the Times—he went over to the Telegraph, you remember, and writes all those protection arguments."
The mayor did not seem to be interested in Dick Jennings, or in the ethics of his profession.
"Of course, you know I'm for you, Mr. Clayton, just exactly as I've always been. I'm going to vote for you."
This did not seem to interest the mayor, either.
"And, maybe, you know—I thought, perhaps," he snatched at this bright new idea that had come to him just in the nick of time; "that I might help you by my cartoons in the Telegraph; that is, I might keep them from being as bad as they might—"
"But that wouldn't be dealing fairly with your new employers, Neil," the mayor said.
Kittrell was making more and more a mess of this whole miserable business, and he was basely glad when they reached the corner.
"Well, good-by, my boy," said the mayor, as they parted. "Remember me to the little woman."