"Maybe it is," said Pat, "but I'm not so sure about that as I am about newspapers." "It's the same thing." "I don't think so. Here's the sort of thing that makes life amusing and isn't worth anything for a newspaper. I was riding in one of those B.R.T. subway trains the other day and there were two women sitting next me on one of those cross seats. One was fat and middle-aged and the other was younger. I didn't notice her so much. It was the fat one who was doing the talking. She was very much excited and she was explaining something to the younger woman. 'Why, I said to him,' she told her--'I said to him, 'Why, Mr. Babcock, I don't want to be sacrilegious but that girl she's so sweet and so pretty I don't even believe our Lord himself could be mean to her.' That made me satisfied with the whole day, but imagine coming in and trying to put it over on Warren or Deering for a story." "A story's got to begin some place and end some place," objected Peter. "The kind I get don't begin any place and so I don't have to wait around for them to end." Peter went to Rufus Twice and told him that Pat didn't seem to be making any progress in general work. "You ought to be more patient, Neale," answered Twice. "What's all this hurry about Pat? He won't be twenty-one yet for a couple of years." "It's nearer than that. It's just thirteen months and three days." Peter could have told him the hours and the minutes too which lay between Pat and his eight o'clock appointment in Paris. "That doesn't make him exactly aged. He's learning or he ought to be learning all the time. Even if he didn't get a line in the paper all year he wouldn't be wasting his time. Just being here helps him to pick up my way of doing things. Of course, when I say 'my' I mean the paper's." "All that's perfectly true, Mr. Twice, but I have a very special reason for wanting him to get ahead right now. I want him to be interested. I want him to feel that he's important." "There isn't any job around here that isn't important. You ought to know that, Neale. None of us count as individuals. We're all part of the Bulletin. Nobody can say that one cog's more important than another. Did you ever see a Liberty motor assembled?" "Yes," said Peter with as much haste and emphasis as he could muster, but it was probably the convenient ringing of the phone which saved him. "If Mr. Boone has anything to say in reply to the story we printed this morning he's welcome to come to my office and see me. That is if he's got facts. I want you to know that I resent his making his complaint through an advertising agency. I don't care if I am impolite. I intend to be. Don't bother to threaten me about your advertising. You can't take it out. I'll beat you to that. It's thrown out. Good-bye."