If Miss Angelina had responded, "Why, you hyena?" she would not have cut him more deeply than with her simple, "Why, Mr. Sloan?"
"A newspaper syndicate," he explained, "has offered D.K.T. a fortune for a series of them."
"Poor Willie!" she sighed. "He flunked his English exam, to-day. I'm afraid I shall have him another year."
"He is a lucky boy," said Sloan.
"Do you think so?"
Clearly her meaning was, "Do you think he is lucky when a powerful newspaper goes out of its way to crush him?"
"There is no use approaching him with a literary contract?"
"Not with the baseball season just opening. His team beat the Watersides yesterday, sixteen nothing. He has more important business on hand than writing for newspapers."
Since Sloan wrote for a newspaper, this was rather a dig.
Nevertheless, he persevered.
"A. Lincoln Wilbram is on his trail. Do you know that Willie libelled
Mrs. Wilbram?"