“Perhaps,” began Hal.

“Oh, perhaps!” Ellis snatched the word from his lips.  “Perhaps you’re the boy to do it, eh?  Why, it’s your kind that’s made journalism the sewer of the professions, full of the scum and drainings of every other trade’s failures.  What chance have we got to develop ideals when you outsiders control the whole business?”

“Hullo!” observed Sterne with a grin.  “Where do you come in on the idealist business, Mac?  This is new talk from you.”

“New?  Why wouldn’t it be new?  Would I waste it on you, Dave Sterne?”

“You certainly never have since I’ve known you.”

“Call it easing up my mind if you like.  I can afford that luxury, now that you ’re not my boss any longer.  Not but what it’s all Greek to you.”

“Had a drink to-day, Mac?”

“No, damn you.  But I’m going out of here and take a hundred.  First, though, I’m going to tell young Bib-and-Tucker over there a thing or two about his new toy.  Oh, yes:  you can listen, too, Sterne, but it won’t get to your shelled-in soul.”

“You in’trust muh, strangely,” said Sterne, and looked over to Hal for countenance of his uneasy amusement.

But the new owner did not appear amused.  He had faced around in his chair and now sat regarding the glooming and exalted Ellis with an intent surprise.

“A plaything!  That’s what you think you’ve bought, young Mr. Harrington Surtaine.  One of two things you’ll do with it:  either you’ll try to run it yourself, and you’ll dip deeper and deeper into Poppa’s medicine-bag till he gets sick of it and closes you up; or you’ll hire some practical man to manage it, and insist on dividends that’ll keep it just where it is now.  And that’s pretty low, even for a Worthington paper.”

“It won’t live on blackmail, at any rate,” said Hal, his mind reverting to its original grievance.

“Maybe it will.  You won’t know it if it does.  Anyhow, it’ll live on suppression and distortion and manipulation of news, because it’ll have to, if it’s going to live at all.”

“You mean that is the basis of the newspaper business as it is to-day?”

“Generally speaking.  It certainly is in Worthington.”

“You’re frank, at any rate.  Where’s all your glowing idealism now?”

“Vanished into mist.  All idealism goes that way, doesn’t it?”

“Not if you back it up with work.  You see, Mr. Ellis, I’m something of an idealist myself.”

“The Certina brand of idealism.  Guaranteed under the Pure Thought and Deed Act.”

“Our money may have been made a little—­well, blatantly,” said Hal, flushing.  “But at least it’s made honestly.”  He was too intent on his subject to note either Sterne’s half-wink or Ellis’s stare of blank amazement.  “And I’m going to run this newspaper on the same high principles.  I don’t quite reconcile your standards with the practices of this paper, Mr. Ellis—­”