his desk.
'We've got some good stuff this number.'

'Nice round articles--yes.' Gideon turned the slips over with his lean
brown fingers carelessly. He picked one up.

'Hallo. I didn't know that chap was reviewing _Coal and Wages_.'

'Yes. He asked if he could.'

'Do you think he knows enough?'

'It's quite a good review. Read it.'

Gideon read it carefully, then laid it down and said, 'I don't agree with
you that it's a good review. He's made at least two mistakes. And the
whole thing's biased by his personal political theories.'

'Only enough to give it colour.'

'You don't want colour in a review of a book of that sort. You only want
intelligence and exact knowledge.'

'Oh, Clitherton's all right. His head's screwed on the right way. He
knows his subject.'

'Not well enough. He's a political theorist, not a good economist. That's
hopeless. Why didn't you get Hinkson to do it?'

'Hinkson can't write for nuts.'

'Doesn't matter. Hinkson wouldn't have slipped up over his figures
or dates.'

'My dear old chap, writing does matter. You're going crazy on that
subject. Of course it matters that a thing should be decently put
together.'

'It matters much more that it should be well informed. It is, of course,
quite possible to be both.'

'Oh, quite. That's the idea of the _Fact_, after all.'

'Peacock, I hate all these slipshod fellows you get now. I wish you'd
chuck the lot. They're well enough for most journalism, but they don't
know enough for us.'

Peacock said, 'Oh, we'll thrash it out another time, if you don't mind.
I've got to get through some letters now,' and rang for his secretary.

Gideon went to his own room and searched old files for the verification
and correction of Clitherton's mistakes. He found them, and made a note
of them. Unfortunately they weakened Clitherton's argument a little.
Clitherton would have to modify it. Clitherton, a sweeping and wholesale
person, would not like that.

Gideon was feeling annoyed with Clitherton, and annoyed with several
others among that week's contributors, and especially annoyed with
Peacock, who permitted and encouraged them. If they went on like this,
the _Fact_ would soon be popular; it would find its way into the great
soft silly heart of the public and there be damned.

He was a pathetic figure, Arthur Gideon, the intolerant precisian,
fighting savagely against the tide of loose thinking that he saw surging
in upon him, swamping the world a