What do you think? Will you join us?"
"No."
"No?" There was no slightest hint of disappointment, surprise, or
resentment in Marrineal's manner. "Do you mind giving me the reason?"
"I don't care to be a reporter on The Patriot."
"Well, this would hardly be reporting. At least, a very specialized and
important type."
"For that matter, I don't care to be a reporter on any paper much
longer. Besides, you need me--or some one--in another department more
than in the news section."
"You don't like the editorials," was the inference which Marrineal drew
from this, and correctly.
"I think they're solemn flapdoodle."
"So do I. Occasionally I write them myself and send them in quietly. It
isn't known yet that I own the property; so I don't appear at the
office. Mine are quite as solemn and flapdoodlish as the others. To
which quality do you object the most?"
"Solemnity. It's the blight of editorial expression. All the papers
suffer from it."
"Then you wouldn't have the editorial page modeled on that of any of our
contemporaries."
"No. I'd try to make it interesting. There isn't a page in town that the
average man-in-the-street-car can read without a painful effort at
thought."
"Editorials are supposed to be for thinking men," put in Edmonds.
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