"If you had only one-tenth the sense that Brennan has there might be some hope for you," the city editor would say. "Brennan is a real newspaper man, a real reporter. I wouldn't trade him for any dozen men in the country. Watch Brennan, read the stuff he writes and study the way he does things if you want to become a reporter." These words, P. Q. knew, would get back to Brennan, who would cross-examine the reporter to get every word of the city editor's commendation. Yet between them, except for rare occasions when they went out to lunch together, there was a "strictly business" attitude that was deceiving. Brennan's loyalty to P. Q. was only rivaled by the city editor's covert admiration for him as a reporter. Several times John overheard wordy altercations between P. Q. and Brennan in which the city editor would threaten to discharge him and Brennan would reply with a threat to resign, but nothing ever came of these quarrels and they were forgotten within an hour after they occurred. From Brennan John received precious bits of advice. "Never argue with a city editor," Brennan warned him. "It's useless. Don't ever, no matter how friendly he is, get familiar with one of them. It's ruinous." Gradually John learned Brennan's story. An Englishman by birth and a university man, Brennan was a rancher in Alberta for a year before he joined the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. He had been everywhere and seen everything. He became a reporter under P. Q. in a Middle West city, and his first training received, he became restless again. He went to Central America to participate in a revolution and then to the South Sea islands. For a time he had been in China, Japan and India, and Kipling's verse was given its proper swing when he recited it. He was a fast, hard boxer and John had to extend himself to hold his own when they sparred for exercise at Blake's gymnasium. "Something of a soldier; something of a dreamer; something of a poet--but only a newspaper man," he once described himself, adding a few seconds later, "Oh, forget it," as though he was ashamed to soliloquize about himself. To John he was unstinted in his laudation of P. Q., whose eccentricities he knew so well. "P. Q. has always believed that a hungry reporter is the best reporter," Brennan told John. "He swears that a reporter works twice as well when he is hungry as when he is well fed. He says a person can't help but become somewhat soggy mentally when his stomach is full, while an empty stomach makes a keen brain. That's why he never has breakfast until after the first edition is away. He practices what he preaches."