HILDEGARDE. Yes. But considered as a cross, your Auntie Joe is nothing to my brother John, who quite justly calls his sister's cookery stuff 'tripe.' It was a most ingenious camouflage of yours to have me pretending to be the author of that food economy 'tripe,' so as to cover my writing quite different articles for _The Echo_ and your coming here to see me so often. Most ingenious. Worthy of a newspaper proprietor. But why should I be saddled with 'tripe' that isn't mine? TRANTO. Why, indeed! Then you think we ought to encourage the volcano with a lighted match--and run? HILDEGARDE. I'm ready if you are. TRANTO. Oh! I'm ready. Secrecy was a great stunt at first. Letting out the secret will be an even greater stunt now. It'll make the finest newspaper story since the fearful fall of the last Cabinet. Sampson Straight--equals Miss Hildegarde Culver, the twenty-one year old daughter of the Controller of Accounts! Typist in the Food Department, by day! Journalistic genius by night! The terror of Ministers! Read by all London! Raised the circulation of _The Echo_ two hundred per cent! Phenomenon unique in the annals of Fleet Street! (_In a different tone, noticing_ Hildegarde's _face_). Crude headlines, I admit, but that's what Uncle Joe has brought us to. We have to compete with Uncle Joe.... HILDEGARDE. Of course I shall have to leave home. TRANTO. Leave home! HILDEGARDE. Yes, and live by myself in rooms. TRANTO. But why? HILDEGARDE. I couldn't possibly stay here. Think how it would compromise father with the War Cabinet if I did. It might ruin him. And as accounts are everything in modern warfare, it might lose the war. But that's nothing--it's mamma I'm thinking of. Do you forget that Sampson Straight, being a young woman of advanced ideas, has written about everything, _everything_--yes, and several other subjects besides? For instance, here's the article I was revising when you came in. (_Shows the title-page to_ Tranto.) TRANTO. Splendid! You're the most courageous creature I ever met. HILDEGARDE. Possibly. But not courageous enough to offer to kiss mamma when I went to bed on the night that _that (indicating the article_) had appeared in print under my own name. You don't know mamma. TRANTO. But dash it! You could eat your mother! HILDEGARDE. Pardon me. The contrary is the fact. Mamma could eat me. TRANTO. But you're the illustrious Sampson Straight. There's more intelligence in your little finger than there is in your mother's whole body. See how you write.