“I am bitter,” said Bates. “But it doesn't often break out. I hold my tongue, and stew in my own juice. We newspaper men see the game, you know. We are behind the scenes, and we see the sawdust put into the dolls. We have to work in this rottenness all the time, and some of us don't like it, I can tell you. But what can we do?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I spend my time getting facts together, and nine times out of ten my newspaper won't print them.”
“I should think you'd quit,” said the other, in a low voice.
“What better can I do?” asked the reporter. “I have the facts; and once in a while there comes an explosion, and I get my chance. So I stick at the job. I can't but believe that if you keep putting these things before the people, sometime, sooner or later, they will do something. Sometime there will come a man who has a conscience and a voice, and who won't sell out. Don't you think so, Mr. Montague?”
“Yes,” said Montague, “I think so.”
CHAPTER XVII
The summer wore on. At the end of August Alice returned from Newport for a couple of days, having some shopping to do before she joined the Prentices at their camp in the Adirondacks.
Society had here a new way of enjoying itself. People built themselves elaborate palaces in the wilderness, and lived in a fantastic kind of rusticity, with every luxury of civilisation included. For this life one needed an entirely separate wardrobe, with doeskin hunting-boots and mountain-climbing skirts—all very picturesque and expensive. It reminded Montague of a jest that he had heard about Mrs. Vivie Patton, whose husband had complained of the expensiveness of her costumes, and requested her to wear simpler dresses. “Very well,” she said, “I will get a lot of simple dresses immediately.”