"You'd better. Poor devils, huh! I guess I know what poor devils be, and the h.e.l.l they're in. Bet your life I do. Huh!"

"I'm a poor devil 'nough myself, when it comes to that," said Amidon, "but I reckon you kin speak for yourself when it comes to talkin'

about bein' in h.e.l.l, Tappan. Fur's I'm concerned, I'm findin' this a purty comfertable sort of place."

Amidon was a tall man, and he stretched his length luxuriously as he spoke. Tappan eyed him malignantly. He was not a pleasant-tempered man, and now he was both weary and impatient of waiting for his turn with the barber.

"I should think any man might be comfortable, ef he had a wife takin'

boarders to support him, but mebbe if she was to be asked to tell the truth, she'd tell a different story," he said. Tappan spoke in a tone of facetious rage, and the others laughed, all except the barber. He had a curious respect for his landlady's husband.

"Ef a lady has the undisposition to let her husband subside on her bounty, it is between them twain. Who G.o.d has joined together, let no man set asunder," said he, bombastically, and even the surly milkman, and Rosenstein under his manipulating razor, when a laugh was dangerous, laughed. John Flynn, when he waxed didactic, and made use of large words and phrases, was the comic column of Banbridge.

Amidon, thus defended, chuckled also, albeit rather foolishly, and slouched to the door. "Guess I'll drop up and git the Sunday paper.

I'll be in later on, John," he mumbled. He had the grace to be somewhat ashamed both by the attack and by the defence, and was for edging out, but stopped on the threshold of the door, arrested by something which the small man said.

"Talkin' about poor devils, there's one man in Banbridge ain't no poor devil. S'pose you know we've got a J. P. Morgan right amongst us?"

"Who?" asked the postmaster; and Amidon, directly now the conversation was thoroughly shifted from himself, returned to his former place.

"I know who he means," said he, importantly. "Oh, it's the man what's rented the Ranger place. They say he's a millionaire."

The milkman straightened himself interestedly. "I rather guess he is," said he. "They take two quarts of cream every morning, and three quarts of milk."

"Lord!" said the barber, gaping over his patron's head. "Lord!"

Although very short and slight, the barber had a large face, simple, amiable with a smirk of conceit as to the lower part; his forehead was very large and round, as was his head, and his blue eyes were very placid, even beautiful. The barber never laughed.

"Two quarts of cream!" said the small man. "Whew!"

"He must be rich if he takes all that cream," said the postmaster. "A half a pint a day about breaks me, but my wife must have it for her coffee."

Rosenstein had so far got his freedom of speech, for the barber had never ceased operation to speak, though rather guardedly. "He must be rich," he said. "Any man in Banbridge that buys as much as he does from a store in the place, an' wants his bills regular every Sat.u.r.day night, has got somethin'."

"Has he paid 'em?" asked the postmaster.

"All except the last one, an' that he didn't pay because I couldn't cash a check for five hundred and give him the balance. 'Lord, sir,'

says I, 'ef you want a check of that value cashed, you'll have to go to John Wanamaker. That's as much as I take in Banbridge in a whole year.' 'Well, mebbe you'll do better this year,' says he, laughing, and goes out. He's a fine-spoken man, an' it was a lucky day for Banbridge when he come here."

"He don't buy many postage-stamps," said the postmaster, thoughtfully, "but he asked me if I should be able to let him have as much as ten dollars' worth at a time, ef he wanted 'em, an' I said I should, an' I've just ordered in more. An' he has a big mail."

The barber had been opening his mouth and catching his breath preparatory to speaking and saying more than any of them. Now he spoke: "That man's wuth a mighty lot of money now," said he, "but what he's wuth now ain't nothin' to what he's goin' to be wuth some day."

"What do you mean, John?" asked Amidon, patronizingly.

"Well, now, I'll tell you what I mean. That man, it's Cap. Carroll what's just arraigned to Banbridge that you're all talkin' about, ain't it?"

"Yes. Go ahead."

"Well, now, Cap. Carroll is agoin' to be one of them great clapatalists, ef he ain't now," he said.

"How?"

"Well, he got holt of some stock that's goin' to bust the market and turn Wall Street into a mill-stream in less than a year, ef it keeps on as it has went so fur."

"What is it?" asked the small man.

The milkman sighed wearily. "Oh, slow up yer jaw, and gimme a chance sometime," he growled. "I want to git home an' git my breakfast. I'm hungry."

Flynn began hurriedly finishing off Rosenstein, talking with no less eagerness as he did so. "Well, it's Bonaflora mining-stock, ef you want to know," he said, importantly.

"Where is it?" asked the postmaster, with a peculiar smile.

"Out West somewhere. It ain't but fifty cents a share, an' it's goin'

up like a skyrocket, an' there's others. There's a new railroad out there, an' other mines, an' a new invention for makin' fuel out of coal-dust, an' some other things."

"Is Captain Carroll the president of them?" asked the small man, with an impressed air. He was very young, and eager-looking, and very shabby. He grubbed on a tiny ancestral farm, for a living for himself and wife and four children, young as he was. He had never had enough to eat, at least of proper food. He did not come to the "Tonsorial Parlor" to be shaved, for he hacked away at his innocent cheeks at home with his deceased father's old razor, but he loved a little gossip. In fact, John Flynn's barber-shop was his one dissipation.

Sometimes he looked longingly at a beer-saloon, but he had no money, unless he starved Minna and the children, and for that he was too good and too timid. His Minna was a stout German girl, twice his size, and she ruled him with a rod of iron. She did not approve of the barber-shop, and so the pleasure had something of the zest of a forbidden one.

Every Sunday he was at his wit's end, which was easily reached, to invent a suitable excuse for his absence. To-day it had been to see if Mrs. Amidon did not want to buy some apples. Some of their last winter's store had been miraculously preserved, and Minna saw the way to a few pennies thereby. He could quite openly say that he had been to the barber-shop to-day, having seen Amidon there, therefore he was quite easy in his mind, and leaned back in his chair with perfect content. One of the children at home cried all the time. A yawning mouth of wrath at existence was about all he ever saw of that particular baby, and Minna almost always scolded, and this was a haven of peace to little w.i.l.l.y Eddy.

Here he felt like a man among men; at home he felt like nothing at all among women. The children were all girls. Sometimes he wondered if a boy-baby might not have been a refuge. He was not very clean; his hands were still stained with picking over potatoes the day before; his shoulders in their rusty coat had a distinct hunch; but he was radiantly happy talking of the rich Captain Carroll. He seemed to taste the honey of the other man's riches and importance in his own mouth. w.i.l.l.y Eddy did not know the meaning of envy. He had such a fund of sympathetic imagination that he possessed the fair possessions of others like a child with fairy tales.

"Is he president of all of them?" asked little w.i.l.l.y Eddy, with gusto, and looked as if he himself held them all in his meagre potato-stained hands.

"No," replied the barber, with importance--"no, he's more than a president. A president is nothin' except a figger-head. I don't care what he's president of, whether it is of this great country or of railroads or what not. They could git along without the president, but they can't without this gentleman. He's the promoter."

"Oh!" said the small man.

The milkman sighed wrathfully again. "Oh, hang it all!" he said.

"I've seed promoters. It's mostly their own pockets they promote."

"Well, I don't know," said the postmaster, as one with authority. "I don't know. Captain Carroll was in the office the other day, and we had a little talk, and it struck me that some of the ventures he is interested in were quite promising. And it is different with a man of his wealth. When a poor man takes up anything of the kind, you can suspect, but this is different. He said to me that he had no occasion, so far as the money was concerned, to turn his finger over for any of them or to open his mouth concerning them. He said he would not be afraid to stake every dollar he had in the world on them if it was necessary."

Flynn had daintily anointed Rosenstein's shaven face with witch-hazel and was now dusting it with powder. Tappan was slouching towards the chair.

"Have you bought some of the stock?" the barber asked, abruptly, of the postmaster, who smiled mysteriously and hedged.

"Well, maybe I have, and maybe again I haven't," said he. "Have you, John?"

"Not yet," replied the barber. "I am deflecting upon the matter. It requires considerable loggitation when a man has penuriously saved a circ.u.mscribed sum from the sweat of his brow."

"That's so. Don't be rash, John," said Amidon.

It was not especially funny, but since Amidon intended it to be, they all obligingly laughed, except Tappan, who set himself with a grunt in the chair and had the white sheet of which Rosenstein had been denuded tied around his neck.

Rosenstein, who was a lean man, with a much-lined face, cast a glance at himself in the looking-gla.s.s, and heaved an odd sigh as he turned away to get his hat.

"You don't seem to be much stuck on your looks, old man," remarked Amidon.