Wint passed the corrected proofs over to B. B. “One or two mistakes,” he said, and the editor sent the proofs up for correction. “What do you do with the darned fools?” Wint asked. “Tell them advertising space costs money?” B. B. looked surprised. “No, I print their names. That’s what the paper’s for--to print people’s names. It makes them feel proud of themselves, and that’s good for them. It’s one way of helping them along, doing them good.” Wint grinned. “Never did me any particular good to see my name in print,” he said. “Usually made me mad.” “It wasn’t the fact that they printed your name that made you mad. It was what they printed about you.” “Maybe so,” Wint admitted. “I didn’t see that it was any of their business.” “That’s the way the city dailies are run,” B. B. agreed. “But a country weekly is a different proposition. I never print anything that will make any one mad. Not if I can help it. Not even a joke. A joke on a man’s no good unless he can appreciate it himself.” Wint eyed B. B. and remarked thoughtfully: “I remember, when they stuck me in as Mayor, you didn’t print the fact that my father was a candidate.” “No,” B. B. agreed. “I supposed that was because you and my father are--allies in politics and such things.” “No,” said B. B. “I try not to print things that will hurt people. Mr. Chase felt badly about that.” “I don’t blame him,” said Wint slowly. “You know I had nothing to do with it.” He had never talked so freely to any one as he was accustomed to talk to B. B. There was some strain in the editor that invited confidences. He knew as many secrets as a doctor. “Yes, I know,” he said. “You know,” Wint went on, abruptly, “people are funny, B. B.” “Yes.” “I’m funny, myself.” B. B. laughed in a friendly way. “Like the old Quaker who said to his wife: ‘All the world is a little queer save thee and me, my dear; and even thee are at times a little queer.’” “No,” said Wint, smiling. “I include myself. I’m queer.” B. B. said nothing. Wint started to go on, but the words were not in him. He had a curious, sudden impulse to ask B. B. about his father; this impulse was like homesickness. But he fought it back. His jaw set stubbornly. His father had thrown him out. That was enough; he didn’t ask to be kicked twice. When B. B. saw that Wint was not going on, he spoke of something else. Then Ed Howe, one of Caretall’s men, dropped in and cut a slice from a plug and filled his pipe in the Caretall fashion: and Wint listened to Ed and B. B. talk for a while before he got up and took himself away. He had found some measure of reassurance in his talk with B. B., not because of anything that had been said, but simply because B. B. was a reassuring man. A strong man. A strong man, and a wise man, with open eyes--and an optimist. Not all men who seem to see clearly are optimists.