advices contribute to the
Bull feeling."

"Do you know Miss Wilbur?" Bradley asked when Cargill came back, being
afraid Cargill might forget the topic of conversation.

"Yes, I meet her occasionally. I meet her at the Square Table Club,
where we fight on literature. They call it the Square Table Club,
because they disagree with the opinions of the most of us real literary
people of the town."

Bradley managed to say, in a comparatively firm tone of voice, that he
had heard of Miss Wilbur as a Grange lecturer, and that he would like
to know more about her.

"Well, I'll introduce you. She aint very easy to understand. She is one
of these infernal advanced women. Now, I like thinkers, but what right
has a woman to think? To think is our manly prerogative. I'm free to
admit that we don't exercise it to much better advantage than we do our
prerogative to vote; but then, damn it, how could we stand wives that
think?"

Bradley had given up trying to understand when Cargill was joking and
when he was in earnest. He knew this was either merciless sarcasm or
the most pig-headed bigotry. Anyhow he did not care to say anything for
fear of drawing him off into a discussion of an impersonal subject,
just when he seemed likely to tell something about Ida's early life.

It was a singular place to receive this information. He sat there with
his elbow on the desk, leaning his head on his palm, studying Cargill's
face as he talked. Over at the other end of the room, the operator was
feeding himself on a pickle with his left hand, and receiving the
telegrams from the far-off, roaring, tumultuous wheat exchange, every
repeated message being a sort of distant echo of the ocean of cries and
the tumult of feet in the city. They were as much alone and talking in
private as if they were in Cargill's own room at the hotel. Cargill
talked on, unmindful of the telephone, the telegraphic ticking, and the
brisk, business-like action of his partner.

"Yes, I have known her ever since she was a girl. Her father was a
queer old seed of a farmer, just out of town here, cranky on
religion--a Universalist, I believe. Had the largest library of his
town; I don't know but the largest private library outside of a city in
the State. His house was literally walled with books. How he got 'em I
don't know. It was currently believed that he was full of information,
but I never heard of any one who was able to get very much out of him.
His wife had been a