“A Ladies’ Page!” suggested Miss Ramsbotham—“a page that should make the woman buy it. The women, believe me, are going to be of more and more importance to the weekly press.”
“But why should she want a special page to herself?” demanded Peter Hope. “Why should not the paper as a whole appeal to her?”
“It doesn’t,” was all Miss Ramsbotham could offer in explanation.
“We give her literature and the drama, poetry, fiction, the higher politics, the——”
“I know, I know,” interrupted Miss Ramsbotham, who of late, among other failings new to her, had developed a tendency towards impatience; “but she gets all that in half a dozen other papers. I have thought it out.” Miss Ramsbotham leaned further across the editorial desk and sunk her voice unconsciously to a confidential whisper. “Tell her the coming fashions. Discuss the question whether hat or bonnet makes you look the younger. Tell her whether red hair or black is to be the new colour, what size waist is being worn by the best people. Oh, come!” laughed Miss Ramsbotham in answer to Peter’s shocked expression; “one cannot reform the world and human nature all at once. You must appeal to people’s folly in order to get them to listen to your wisdom. Make your paper a success first. You can make it a power afterwards.”
“But,” argued Peter, “there are already such papers—papers devoted to—to that sort of thing, and to nothing else.”
“At sixpence!” replied the practical Miss Ramsbotham. “I am thinking of the lower middle-class woman who has twenty pounds a year to spend on dress, and who takes twelve hours a day to think about it, poor creature. My dear friend, there is a fortune in it. Think of the advertisements.”
Poor Peter groaned—old Peter, the dreamer of dreams. But for thought of Tommy! one day to be left alone to battle with a stony-eyed, deaf world, Peter most assuredly would have risen in his wrath, would have said to his distinguished-looking temptress, “Get thee behind me, Miss Ramsbotham. My journalistic instinct whispers to me that your scheme, judged by the mammon of unrighteousness, is good. It is a new departure. Ten years hence half the London journals will have adopted it. There is money in it. But what of that? Shall I for mere dross sell my editorial soul, turn the temple of the Mighty Pen into a den of—of milliners! Good morning, Miss Ramsbotham. I grieve for you. I grieve for you as for a fellow- worker once inspired by devotion to a noble calling, who has fallen from her high estate. Good morning, madam.”
So Peter thought as he sat tattooing with his finger-tips upon the desk; but only said—
“It would have to be well done.”
“Everything would depend upon how it was done,” agreed Miss Ramsbotham. “Badly done, the idea would be wasted. You would be merely giving it away to some other paper.”
“Do you know of anyone?” queried Peter.
“I was thinking of myself,” answered Miss Ramsbotham.
“I am sorry,” said Peter Hope.
“Why?” demanded Miss Ramsbotham. “Don’t you think I could do it?”
“I think,” said Peter, “no one could do it better. I am sorry you should wish to do it—that is all.”
“I want to do it,” replied Miss Ramsbotham, a note of doggedness in her voice.
“How much do you propose to charge me?” Peter smiled.