"I don't see that they are." "Well, everybody else sees it. Now look here, Roger. We'll overlook it this time because it wasn't done with your knowledge or consent and you naturally don't understand matters very clearly yet. But it can't happen again, you hear. We won't stand for it." "And who is supposed to be talking?" asked Roger mildly. "Who's talking? _I'm_ talking! And I'm a vice-president of Corey & Company. That's who's talking." Roger shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette. "Honestly, Joe, I don't get you at all. What's all the fuss about anyway?" "Good God, man," cried Faxon in exasperation. He drew a long breath, and, drawing his chair up closer to Roger's, began an elementary explanation of certain business relationships. In the meanwhile Bassett and Jenkins and Good sat staring moodily at one another. "It's a shame!" exclaimed Bassett, savagely chewing on his unlighted cigar. "He'll twist that kid around his finger. He'll pull the wool over his eyes forty different ways." "Faxon's a clever fellow," mused Jenkins mournfully. Good filled his pipe and lighted it. He smoked in silence for a little while. "The Lord's got to be trusted some time," he sighed finally; "I suppose it might just as well be now--but a little more priming would have helped. Just a little more." "Oh, the kid will knuckle under, that's certain," snarled Bassett. "There's no doubt of _that_. This whole proposition is doomed to failure. It's too good to be true, altogether too good. I tell you, Good, you're asking too much of these people. You're trying to make water rise higher than its source. You're trying to make them prove superior to their whole history, their environment, their friends, everything they've got." "People prove superior to those things every day," said Good mildly. "Not when they have to pay as big a price as you're asking." "Don't you know there are people who have to be made to pay a big price before they think a thing's worth anything?" Bassett snorted and bit his cigar clear through. "You're the damnedest, most idiotic optimist I ever hope to see!" he cried. Then they all laughed cheerlessly and relapsed into their moody, waiting silence. At that very moment, in Jenkins' private office, Roger Wynrod leaned back in his chair and lit another cigarette. He puffed thoughtfully for a moment or two without speaking. "See if I've got this straight, Joe," he said finally. "As I understand your proposition, it's this: As long as we lie down and play good dog, we're a _good_ advertising medium. When we get up and bark at something we think ought to be barked at, then we're a _bad_ advertising medium." "That's one way of expressing it, Roger," laughed Faxon.