another kind, especially from the
Germans and Jews. When Willy Eddy's wife had declaimed, one
stenographer had whispered to the other, "How vulgar!" and the other
had responded with a nod and curl of a lip of scorn. They met Madame
Griggs's hostile regard with icy stares. The less pretty girl said to
the young man that she thought it was mean for a dressmaker to come
there and hound folks like that, and he nodded, winking
disapprovingly at poor Madame Griggs, who was just then cherishing
the wild idea of consulting him for herself in his supposed capacity
of a lawyer. The stenographer, turning from her remark to the clerk,
met the laughing but impertinent gaze of one of the horse-trading
men, and she turned her back upon him with an emphasis that provoked
a chuckle from his companion.

"Got it in the shoulder then, Bill," he remarked, quite audibly, and
the other reddened and grinned foolishly. They were rough-looking men
with a certain swagger of smartness. They regarded Carroll with a
swearing emphasis, yet with a measure of reluctantly compelled
admiration.

"I'll be damned if he ain't the first that ever got the better of Jim
Dickerson," one had said to the other, as they had driven up to the
house that evening. "I'll be ---- damned if I see now how he got the
better of me," the other rejoined, with a bewildered expression. As
he spoke his mind revolved in the devious mesh of trap which he had
set for Carroll, and realized the clean cutting of it by Carroll by
the ruthless method of self-interest. Neither man had spoken besides
a defiant response to Carroll's polite "Good-evening," when they had
entered. They sat and watched and listened. Occasionally one raised a
hand, and an enormous diamond glowed with a red light like a ruby. In
the four-in-hand tie of the other a scarf-pin in the shape of a
horse's head with diamond eyes caught the light with infinitesimal
sparks of fire. Above it his clean-shaven, keen, blue-eyed face kept
watch, sharply ready to strike anger as the diamonds struck light,
and yet with a certain amusement. He had shown his teeth in a smile
when Willy Eddy's wife pronounced her tirade. He did so again when
she reopened, having regained her wind. When she spoke this time, she
glared at Anna Carroll with a dazzling look of spite.

"There ain't no red silk dresses for me to rig out in," said she, and
she pointed straight at Anna's silken skirts. "No, there ain't, and
there won't be, so long as