“It makes me sick!” growled Galpin. “Oh, I ain’t kicking, Boss! Only it’ll be a tough game if, after all our scrapping, right and wrong--and we haven’t always been a hundred per cent right, you know--we get ours from a bunch of half-breeds and double-facers, like the Governor and his crowd, because we would n’t straddle a hyphen.” There followed a thoughtful silence between the two. Then the owner spoke: “Did Verrall make you an offer, Andy?” “Kind of hinted round.” “How much did he hint? In dollars?” “Oh, a little raise. Nothing much.” “I can’t honestly say”--Jeremy spoke with an effort--“but what the new paper’s a better prospect than this, as things stand. I think you ought to consider it carefully.” “That’s your best advice, is it?” “I guess it is, Andy.” Galpin wandered about the room, arriving by a devious and irresolute route at the door. He opened it, shut it, opened it again, stood swinging it with a smudged hand. “Boss,” he said insinuatingly. “Well?” “Speaking as man to man, and not as employee to employer--” “Don’t bleat like a goat, Andy.” “--you can take your advice and go to hell with it. I stick!” CHAPTER XIII ANNOUNCEMENT of the new paper was not to be formally made as yet. Its projectors had other possible plans in mind. Already, however, its competition bade fair to be fatal to The Guardian. Simple mathematics proved to the complete dissatisfaction of Jeremy and Andrew Galpin that a store’s advertising appropriation of twelve hundred dollars yearly, say, divided between two papers would give to each six hundred dollars revenue; whereas divided among three papers it would afford only four hundred dollars apiece. Therefore, quite apart from German boycott, The Guardian might expect a loss of thirty-three and a third per cent of the income from such advertisers as the department stores, which would naturally use all local mediums. But in this case, the purity of mathematics was corrupted by complicating human elements not all of them adverse. Reports of the Ahrens interview had drifted through the mercantile world. It became known, too, that Ellison Brothers had dropped out of The Guardian; been “bluffed” out, rumor said, by pressure of Deutscher Club threats. The Germans, so the word passed, were now openly out to “get” The Guardian. As a gleam in the gloom Galpin was able to report one morning a cheering sign: “We’re beginning to get a little reaction from the Botches’ attack. Remember the Laundry Association who lifted their contracts in a bunch early in the game?” “Because we took Wong Kee’s ad? I remember.” “They’re back with the American flag over their copy. Lamp this, Boss.” The note he tendered was written in the most approved style of business-college condensation, and read as follows: _To the Pub’r of the Guardian. D’r Sir: A Chink may not be White but he is a Long Sight better American than any Kaiser-hound. Inclosed please find contract renewals. Resp’y, for the Com’tee,