Therefore it was once more just a little irritating that Mr. Strong, instead of telling her what type he did admire, should merely laugh and say, "Well--not Mrs. Tasker." If Amory had a criticism at all to make of Mr. Strong it was this habit of his of negatives, that sometimes almost justified the nickname Mr. Brimby had given him, of "Stone Wall Strong." So she dropped one hand from her chin, allowing it to hang loose over her knee while the other forearm still kept its swan's-neck curve, and said abruptly, "Well--about the Indian Number. Let's get on."
"Ah, yes," said Mr. Strong. "Let's get on."
"But you say you have your doubts about it?"
Mr. Strong hesitated. "Only about its selling-power," he said with a little shrug. "We must sell the paper, you see. It's not paying its way yet."
"Well, I'm sure that's not Mr. Prang's fault," Amory retorted. "He's practically made the export circulation."
"You mean the Bombay circulation? Yes, I suppose he has. I don't deny it."
"You can't deny it. Since Prang began to write for us we've done awfully well in Bombay."
To that too, Mr. Strong assented. Then Amory, after a moment's pause, spoke quietly. She did not like to think of her editor as jealous of his own contributors.
"I know you don't like Mr. Prang," she said, looking fixedly at the asbestos log.
"I!" began Stone Wall Strong. "Why, you know I think he's a first rate fellow, if only----"
This time, however, Amory really did intend to get it out of him. For once she would have one of those hung-up sentences completed.
"If only what?" she said, looking up at him.
"Oh, I don't know--as you said a moment ago, there's no 'why' about these things----"
"But I did give you my impression. You don't give me yours."
"You did, I admit. Yes, I admit you did.... What is it you want to know, then?"
"Only why you seem so doubtful about Mr. Prang."
Those who knew Edgar Strong the best said that he was a man who, other things being equal, would rather go straight than not. Even when the other things were not quite equal, he still had a mild preference for straightness. But if other people positively insisted that he should deviate from straightness, very well; that was their lookout. He had been a good many things in his time--solicitor's clerk, free-lance journalist, book-pedlar, election-agent's minion, Vanner, poetic vagabond, and always an unerring "spotter" of the literary son of the farming squire the moment he appeared in sight; and the "Novum" was the softest job he had found yet. If the price of his keeping it was that he should look its owner's wife long and earnestly in the eyes, as if in his own there lay immeasurable things, not for him to give but for her to take if she list, so be it; he would sleep none the less well in his rent-free bedroom behind the "Novum's" offices afterwards. His experience of far less comfortable sleeping-quarters had persuaded him that in this imperfect world a man is entitled to exactly what he can get.