You
are a journalist in your--well, in your approach. 'What the public
wants.'"
Inwardly Banneker was raging. The incisive perception stung. But he
spoke lightly. "Doesn't The New Era want what its public wants?"
"My dear sir, in the words of a man who ought to have been an editor of
to-day, 'The public be damned!' What I looked to you for was not your
idea of what somebody else wanted you to write, but your expression of
what you yourself want to write. About hoboes. About railroad wrecks.
About cowmen or peddlers or waterside toughs or stage-door Johnnies, or
ward politicians, or school-teachers, or life. Not pink teas."
"I have read pink-tea stories in your magazine."
"Of course you have. Written by people who could see through the pink to
the primary colors underneath. When _you_ go to a pink tea, you are
pink. Did you ever go to one?"
Still thoroughly angry, Banneker nevertheless laughed, "Then the story
is no use?"
"Not to us, certainly. Miss Thornborough almost wept over it. She said
that you would undoubtedly sell it to The Bon Vivant and be damned
forever."
"Thank her on my behalf," returned the other gravely. "If The Bon Vivant
wants it and will pay for it, I shall certainly sell it to them."
"Out of pique?.
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