“I can see that.”

“Oh, you can, can you?” chuckled the other.  “But it’s true that we have no opening here.”

(The Ledger never did have an “opening”; but it managed to wedge in a goodly number of neophytes, from year to year, ninety per cent of whom were automatically and courteously ejected after due trial.  Mr. Gordon performed a surpassing rataplan upon his long-suffering thumb-joint and wondered if this queer and direct being might qualify among the redeemable ten per cent.)

“I can wait.” (They often said that.) “For a while,” added the youth thoughtfully.

“How long have you been in New York?”

“Thirty-three days.”

“And what have you been doing?”

“Reading newspapers.”

“No!  Reading—­That’s rather surprising.  All of them?”

“All that I could manage.”

“Some were so bad that you couldn’t worry through them, eh?” asked the other with appreciation.

“Not that.  But I didn’t know the foreign languages except French, and Spanish, and a little Italian.”

“The foreign-language press, too.  Remarkable!” murmured the other.  “Do you mind telling me what your idea was?”

“It was simple enough.  As I wanted to get on a newspaper, I thought I ought to find out what newspapers were made of.”

“Simple, as you say.  Beautifully simple!  So you’ve devised for yourself the little job of perfecting yourself in every department of journalism; politics, finances, criminal, sports, society; all of them, eh?”

“No; not all,” replied Banneker.

“Not?  What have you left out?”

“Society news” was the answer, delivered less promptly than the other replies.

Bestowing a twinkle of mingled amusement and conjecture upon the applicant’s clothing, Mr. Gordon said: 

“You don’t approve of our social records?  Or you’re not interested?  Or why is it that you neglect this popular branch?”

“Personal reasons.”

This reply, which took the managing editor somewhat aback, was accurate if not explanatory.  Miss Van Arsdale’s commentaries upon Gardner and his quest had inspired Banneker with a contemptuous distaste for this type of journalism.  But chiefly he had shunned the society columns from dread of finding there some mention of her who had been Io Welland.  He was resolved to conquer and evict that memory; he would not consciously put himself in the way of anything that recalled it.

“Hum!  And this notion of making an intensive study of the papers; was that original with you?”

“Well, no, not entirely.  I got it from a man who made himself a bank president in seven years.”

“Yes?  How did he do that?”

“He started by reading everything he could find about money and coinage and stocks and bonds and other financial paper.  He told me that it was incredible the things that financial experts didn’t know about their own business—­the deep-down things—­and that he guessed it was so with any business.  He got on top by really knowing the things that everybody was supposed to know.”