March answered him.  “I guess we must have been waiting for you, Fulkerson.  At any rate, we hadn’t got to the scolding yet.”

“Why, I didn’t suppose Mr. Dryfoos could ‘a’ held in so long.  I understood he was awful mad at the way the thing started off, and wanted to give you a piece of his mind, when he got at you.  I inferred as much from a remark that he made.”  March and Dryfoos looked foolish, as men do when made the subject of this sort of merry misrepresentation.

“I reckon my scolding will keep awhile yet,” said the old man, dryly.

“Well, then, I guess it’s a good chance to give Mr. Dryfoos an idea of what we’ve really done—­just while we’re resting, as Artemus Ward says.  Heigh, March?”

“I will let you blow the trumpet, Fulkerson.  I think it belongs strictly to the advertising department,” said March.  He now distinctly resented the old man’s failure to say anything to him of the magazine; he made his inference that it was from a suspicion of his readiness to presume upon a recognition of his share in the success, and he was determined to second no sort of appeal for it.

“The advertising department is the heart and soul of every business,” said Fulkerson, hardily, “and I like to keep my hand in with a little practise on the trumpet in private.  I don’t believe Mr. Dryfoos has got any idea of the extent of this thing.  He’s been out among those Rackensackens, where we were all born, and he’s read the notices in their seven by nine dailies, and he’s seen the thing selling on the cars, and he thinks he appreciates what’s been done.  But I should just like to take him round in this little old metropolis awhile, and show him ’Every Other Week’ on the centre tables of the millionaires—­the Vanderbilts and the Astors—­and in the homes of culture and refinement everywhere, and let him judge for himself.  It’s the talk of the clubs and the dinner-tables; children cry for it; it’s the Castoria of literature and the Pearline of art, the ’Won’t-be-happy-till-he-gets-it of every en lightened man, woman, and child in this vast city.  I knew we could capture the country; but, my goodness!  I didn’t expect to have New York fall into our hands at a blow.  But that’s just exactly what New York has done.  Every Other Week supplies the long-felt want that’s been grinding round in New York and keeping it awake nights ever since the war.  It’s the culmination of all the high and ennobling ideals of the past.”

“How much,” asked Dryfoos, “do you expect to get out of it the first year, if it keeps the start it’s got?”

“Comes right down to business, every time!” said Fulkerson, referring the characteristic to March with a delighted glance.  “Well, sir, if everything works right, and we get rain enough to fill up the springs, and it isn’t a grasshopper year, I expect to clear above all expenses something in the neighborhood of twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“Humph!  And you are all going to work a year—­editor, manager, publisher, artists, writers, printers, and the rest of ’em—­to clear twenty-five thousand dollars?—­I made that much in half a day in Moffitt once.  I see it made in half a minute in Wall Street, sometimes.”  The old man presented this aspect of the case with a good-natured contempt, which included Fulkerson and his enthusiasm in an obvious liking.