sensitive about what you
said just now is that, strictly between ourselves, Ridgeon cooked our
young friend's goose.

Jennifer, worried and distressed, but always gentle, comes between them
from the inner room. She wears a nurse's apron.

MRS. DUBEDAT. Sir Ralph: what am I to do? That man who insisted on
seeing me, and sent in word that business was important to Louis, is
a newspaper man. A paragraph appeared in the paper this morning saying
that Louis is seriously ill; and this man wants to interview him about
it. How can people be so brutally callous?

WALPOLE [moving vengefully towards the door] You just leave me to deal
with him!

MRS DUBEDAT [stopping him] But Louis insists on seeing him: he almost
began to cry about it. And he says he cant bear his room any longer. He
says he wants to [she struggles with a sob]--to die in his studio. Sir
Patrick says let him have his way: it can do no harm. What shall we do?

B B. [encouragingly] Why, follow Sir Patrick's excellent advice, of
course. As he says, it can do him no harm; and it will no doubt do him
good--a great deal of good. He will be much the better for it.

MRS DUBEDAT [a little cheered] Will you bring the man up here, Mr
Walpole, and tell him that he may see Louis, but that he mustnt exhaust
him by talking? [Walpole nods and goes out by the outer door]. Sir
Ralph, dont be angry with me; but Louis will die if he stays here. I
must take him to Cornwall. He will recover there.

B. B. [brightening wonderfully, as if Dubedat were already saved]
Cornwall! The very place for him! Wonderful for the lungs. Stupid of me
not to think of it before. You are his best physician after all, dear
lady. An inspiration! Cornwall: of course, yes, yes, yes.

MRS DUBEDAT [comforted and touched] You are so kind, Sir Ralph. But dont
give me much or I shall cry; and Louis cant bear that.

B. B. [gently putting his protecting arm round her shoulders] Then let
us come back to him and help to carry him in. Cornwall! of course, of
course. The very thing! [They go together into the bedroom].

Walpole returns with The Newspaper Man, a cheerful, affable young
man who is disabled for ordinary business pursuits by a congenital
erroneousness which renders him incapable of describing accurately
anything he sees, or understanding or reporting accurately anything he
hears. As the only employment in which these defects do not matter is
journalism (for a newspaper, not having to act on its