But I’d sooner run my Echo on my own than inherit Uncle Joe’s controlling share in twenty-five daily papers, seventy-one weekly papers, six monthly magazines, and three independent advertising agencies.  I know I’m a poor man, but I’m quite ready to go on facing the world bravely with my modest capital of a couple of hundred thousand pounds.  Only Auntie Joe can’t understand that.  She’s absolutely convinced that I have a terrific grudge against her and her twins, and that in order to gratify that grudge I myself personally write articles against all her most sacred ideals under the pseudonym of Sampson Straight.  I’ve pointed out to her that I’m a newspaper proprietor, and no newspaper proprietor ever could write.  No use!  She won’t listen.

HILDEGARDE.  Then she thinks you’re a liar.

TRANTO.  Oh, not at all.  Only a journalist.  But you perceive the widening rift in the family lute. (A silence.) Pardon this glimpse into the secret history of the week.

HILDEGARDE (formidably).  Mr. Tranto, you and I are sitting on the edge of a volcano.

TRANTO.  We are.  I like it.  Thrilling, and yet so warm and cosy.

HILDEGARDE.  I used to like it once.  But I don’t think I like it any more.

TRANTO.  Now please don’t let Auntie Joe worry you.  She’s my cross, not yours.

HILDEGARDE.  Yes.  But considered as a cross, your Auntie Joe is nothing to my brother John, who quite justly calls his sister’s cookery stuff ‘tripe.’  It was a most ingenious camouflage of yours to have me pretending to be the author of that food economy ‘tripe,’ so as to cover my writing quite different articles for The Echo and your coming here to see me so often.  Most ingenious.  Worthy of a newspaper proprietor.  But why should I be saddled with ‘tripe’ that isn’t mine?

TRANTO.  Why, indeed!  Then you think we ought to encourage the volcano with a lighted match—­and run?

HILDEGARDE.  I’m ready if you are.

TRANTO.  Oh!  I’m ready.  Secrecy was a great stunt at first.  Letting out the secret will be an even greater stunt now.  It’ll make the finest newspaper story since the fearful fall of the last Cabinet.  Sampson Straight—­equals Miss Hildegarde Culver, the twenty-one year old daughter of the Controller of Accounts!  Typist in the Food Department, by day!  Journalistic genius by night!  The terror of Ministers!  Read by all London!  Raised the circulation of The Echo two hundred per cent!  Phenomenon unique in the annals of Fleet Street! (In a different tone, noticing Hildegarde’s face).  Crude headlines, I admit, but that’s what Uncle Joe has brought us to.  We have to compete with Uncle Joe....

HILDEGARDE.  Of course I shall have to leave home.

TRANTO.  Leave home!

HILDEGARDE.  Yes, and live by myself in rooms.

TRANTO.  But why?