n the
milkman, and a number of others. Amidon was in the chair, and spoke
whenever it did not seem too hazardous. He had just had his hair cut
also, as a delicate concession to the barber on the part of a free
customer on a busy morning, and his rather large head glistened like
a silver ball.

"Reckon Carroll must have gone out West promotin' to raise a little
wind for the weddin'," he said.

"I haven't seed him, and I atropined he had not come back yet,"
remarked the barber.

Lee looked up from his Sunday paper--all the men except young Willy
Eddy were provided with Sunday papers; he waited patiently for a
spare page finished and thrown aside by another. Besides the odors of
soap and perfumed oils and bay-rum and tobacco-smoke, that filled the
little place, was the redolence of fresh newspapers, staring with
violent head-lines, and as full of rustle as a forest.

Lee looked up from his paper, and gave his head a curious,
consequential toss. He had been shaved himself, and his little tuft
of yellow beard was trimmed to a nicety. He looked sleek and
well-dressed, and he had always his indefinable air of straining
himself furtively upon tiptoe to reach some unattainable height.
Lee's consequentiality had something painful about it at times.

"I guess Captain Carroll hadn't any need to go out West promoting. I
rather think he can find all the business he wants right here," he
said.

Tappan the milkman, bearded and grim, looked up from an article on
the coal strike. "Guess he _can_ find about fools enough right here
to work on, that's right," said he, and there was a laugh.

Lee's small blond face colored furiously; his voice was shrill in
response. "Perhaps those he doesn't work, as you call it, are bigger
fools than those he does," said he.

"Say," said the milkman, with a snarling sort of humor. He fastened
brutally twinkling eyes on Lee. Everybody waited; the little barber
held the razor poised over Amidon's chin. "When do your next
dividends come in?" he inquired.

Lee gave an angry sniff, and flirted up his paper before his face.

"Why don't ye say?" pressed Tappan, with a hard wink at the others.

"I don't know that it is any of your business," replied Lee.

"Ask when the millennium's comin'," said Amidon, in the chair.

"I wish I was as sure of the millennium as I am of those dividends,"
declared Lee, brought to bay.

"Glad you've got faith in that dead-beat. He's owin' me for fifteen
dollars' wor