ed himself so bored, so injured, by Fulkerson's insisting
upon having him. "And is it a secret? Is it a thing not to be spoken of?"

"'Tutt' altro'! Fulkerson will be enraptured to have it spoken of in
society. He would pay any reasonable bill for the advertisement."

"What a delightful creature! Tell him it shall all be spent in charity."

"He would like that. He would get two paragraphs out of the fact, and
your name would go into the 'Literary Notes' of all the newspapers."

"Oh, but I shouldn't want my name used!" cried the girl, half horrified
into fancying the situation real.

"Then you'd better not say anything about 'Every Other Week'. Fulkerson
is preternaturally unscrupulous."

March began to think so too, at times. He was perpetually suggesting
changes in the make-up of the first number, with a view to its greater
vividness of effect. One day he came and said: "This thing isn't going to
have any sort of get up and howl about it, unless you have a paper in the
first number going for Bevans's novels. Better get Maxwell to do it."

"Why, I thought you liked Bevans's novels?"

"So I did; but where the good of 'Every Other Week' is concerned I am a
Roman father. The popular gag is to abuse Bevans, and Maxwell is the man
to do it. There hasn't been a new magazine started for the last three
years that hasn't had an article from Maxwell in its first number cutting
Bevans all to pieces. If people don't see it, they'll think 'Every Other
Week' is some old thing."

March did not know whether Fulkerson was joking or not. He suggested,
"Perhaps they'll think it's an old thing if they do see it."

"Well, get somebody else, then; or else get Maxwell to write under an
assumed name. Or--I forgot! He'll be anonymous under our system, anyway.
Now there ain't a more popular racket for us to work in that first number
than a good, swinging attack on Bevans. People read his books and quarrel
over 'em, and the critics are all against him, and a regular flaying,
with salt and vinegar rubbed in afterward, will tell more with people who
like good old-fashioned fiction than anything else. I like Bevans's
things, but, dad burn it! when it comes to that first number, I'd offer
up anybody."

"What an immoral little wretch you are, Fulkerson!" said March, with a
laugh.

Fulkerson appeared not to be very strenuous about the attack on the
novelist. "Say!" he called out, gayly, "what should you think of a paper
defending the late