e a liar.

TRANTO. Oh, not at all. Only a journalist. But you perceive the widening
rift in the family lute. (_A silence_.) Pardon this glimpse into the
secret history of the week.

HILDEGARDE (_formidably_). Mr. Tranto, you and I are sitting on the edge
of a volcano.

TRANTO. We are. I like it. Thrilling, and yet so warm and cosy.

HILDEGARDE. I used to like it once. But I don't think I like it any
more.

TRANTO. Now please don't let Auntie Joe worry you. She's my cross, not
yours.

HILDEGARDE. Yes. But considered as a cross, your Auntie Joe is nothing
to my brother John, who quite justly calls his sister's cookery stuff
'tripe.' It was a most ingenious camouflage of yours to have me
pretending to be the author of that food economy 'tripe,' so as to cover
my writing quite different articles for _The Echo_ and your coming here
to see me so often. Most ingenious. Worthy of a newspaper proprietor.
But why should I be saddled with 'tripe' that isn't mine?

TRANTO. Why, indeed! Then you think we ought to encourage the volcano
with a lighted match--and run?

HILDEGARDE. I'm ready if you are.

TRANTO. Oh! I'm ready. Secrecy was a great stunt at first. Letting out
the secret will be an even greater stunt now. It'll make the finest
newspaper story since the fearful fall of the last Cabinet. Sampson
Straight--equals Miss Hildegarde Culver, the twenty-one year old
daughter of the Controller of Accounts! Typist in the Food Department,
by day! Journalistic genius by night! The terror of Ministers! Read by
all London! Raised the circulation of _The Echo_ two hundred per cent!
Phenomenon unique in the annals of Fleet Street! (_In a different tone,
noticing_ Hildegarde's _face_). Crude headlines, I admit, but that's
what Uncle Joe has brought us to. We have to compete with Uncle Joe....

HILDEGARDE. Of course I shall have to leave home.

TRANTO. Leave home!

HILDEGARDE. Yes, and live by myself in rooms.

TRANTO. But why?

HILDEGARDE. I couldn't possibly stay here. Think how it would compromise
father with the War Cabinet if I did. It might ruin him. And as accounts
are everything in modern warfare, it might lose the war. But that's
nothing--it's mamma I'm thinking of. Do you forget that Sampson
Straight, being a young woman of advanced ideas, has written about
everything, _everything_--yes, and several other subjects besides? For
instance, here's the article I was revising when you came in. (_Shows
the title-page to