'"
Howard stopped him with "Thank you. Don't write anything about them."
"It was the best thing I saw--the funniest."
"Well--don't use the names."
Young Blackwell turned to go. "Oh, I see--friends of yours," he smiled.
"Very well. I'll keep 'em out."
Howard flushed and called him back. "Go ahead," he said. "Write just what
you were going to. Of course you wouldn't write anything that was not fair
and truthful. We don't 'play favourites' here. Forget what I said."
And so it came to pass that Mrs. Provost, half pleased, half indignant,
said to Miss Trevor as they sat in the drawing room of the Pullman on the
way to Newport the next day: "Just look at this, Marian dear, in the horrid
_News-Record_. And it used to be such a nice paper with that slimy
Coulter bowing and scraping to everybody."
"This" was Mrs. Provost and her dogs and her maids and her asides to
"Marian dear," described with accuracy and a keen sense of the ludicrous.
"It's too dreadful," she continued. "There is no such thing as privacy in
this country. The newspapers are making us," with a slight accent on the
pronoun, "as common and public as tenement-house people."
"Yes," Miss Trevor answered absently. "But why read the newspapers? I never
could get interested in them, though I've tried.
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