h--no, it's more individual
than that. But you've got something that's going to stick out even here.
Just the same, there'll come a time when you'll have to face the other
issue of your job or your--well, your conscience."

What Tommy Burt did not say in continuation, and had no need to say,
since his expressive and ingenuous face said it for him, was, "And I
wonder what you'll do with _that_!"

A far more influential friend than Tommy Burt had been wondering, too,
and had, not without difficulty, expressed her doubts in writing.
Camilla Van Arsdale had written to Banneker:

... I know so little of journalism, but there are things about it that I
distrust instinctively. Do you remember what that wrangler from the _Jon
Cal_ told Old Bill Speed when Bill wanted to hire him: "I wouldn't take
any job that I couldn't look in the eye and tell it to go to hell on
five minutes' notice." I have a notion that you've got to take that
attitude toward a reporting job. There must be so much that a man cannot
do without loss of self-respect. Yet, I can't imagine why I should worry
about you as to that. Unless it is that, in a strange environment one
gets one's values confused.... Have you had to do any "Society"
reporting yet? I hope not. The society reporters of my day were either
obsequious little flunkeys and parasites, or women of good connections
but no money who capitalized their acquaintanceship to make a poor
living, and whom one was sorry for, but would rather not see. Going to
places where one is not asked, scavenging for bits of news from butlers
and housekeepers, sniffing after scandals--perhaps that is part of the
necessary apprenticeship of newspaper work. But it's not a proper work
for a gentleman. And, in any case, Ban, you are that, by the grace of
your ancestral gods.

Little enough did Banneker care for his ancestral gods: but he did
greatly care for the maintenance of those standards which seemed to have
grown, indigenously within him, since he had never consciously
formulated them. As for reporting, of whatever kind, he deemed Miss Van
Arsdale prejudiced. Furthermore, he had met the society reporter of The
Ledger, an elderly, mild, inoffensive man, neat and industrious, and
discerned in him no stigma of the lickspittle. Nevertheless, he hoped
that he would not be assigned to such "society news" as Remington did
not cover in his routine. It might, he conceived, lead him into false
situations where he could be p