“A great deal more.... Have you no place to eat or sleep?” she said, suddenly. “My landlady has set my trunk on the porch, and as for food, I breakfasted on berries.... They are not filling,” he added. Carmel considered. In her few short days of ownership she had discovered the magnitude of the task of rehabilitating the _Free Press_. She had seen how she must be business manager, advertising solicitor, and editor, and that any of the three positions could well demand all of her time. It would be useless to edit a paper, she comprehended, if there was no business to support it. Contrariwise, it would be impossible to get business for a paper as futile as the _Free Press_ was at that moment in its history. “How,” she said, “would you like to be an editor--a kind of an editor?” “I’d like it,” he said. “Then I could say to the public the things I’d like to say to the public. You can’t educate them. They don’t care. They are sunk in a slough of inertia with a rock of ignorance around their necks. I would like to tell them how thick-headed they are. It would be a satisfaction.” “I’m afraid,” said Carmel, “you wouldn’t do for an editor.” “Why not, I should like to know?” “Because,” said Carmel, “you don’t know very much.” She could see him swell with offended dignity. “Good morning,” he said, and turned away without lifting his hat. “And you have very bad manners,” she added. “Eh?... What’s that?” “Yes. And I imagine you are awfully selfish and self-centered. You don’t think about anybody but yourself, do you? You--you imagine the universe has its center in Prof. Evan Bartholomew Pell, and you look down on everybody who hasn’t a lot of degrees to string after his name. You don’t like people.” She paused and snapped a question at him. “How much did they pay you for being superintendent of schools?” “Fifteen hundred dollars a year,” he said, the answer being surprised out of him. “Doesn’t that take down your conceit?” “Conceit!... Conceit!...” “Yes--a good carpenter earns more than that. The world can’t set such a high value on you if it pays a mechanic more than it does you.” “I told you,” he said, impatiently, “that the world is silly and ignorant.” “It is you who are silly and ignorant.” “You--you have no right to talk to me like this. You--you are forward and--and impertinent. I never met such a young woman.” “It’s for the good of your soul,” she said, “and because--because I think I’m going to hire you to write editorials and help gather news. Before you start in, you’ve got to revise your notions of the world--and of yourself. If you don’t like people, people won’t like you.” Evidently he had been giving scant attention to her and plenary consideration to himself. “How much will you pay me?” he asked. “There you are!... I don’t know. Whatever I pay you will be more than you are worth.” He was thinking about himself again, and thinking aloud.