gic
absurdity of the situation filled him at once with a monstrous mirth
and grief. The antitheses of emotion struggled together within him.
He looked at the little, frantic creature before him, and opened his
mouth to speak, but he said nothing. Anna Carroll caught his elbow.

"Come away, Arthur," she whispered.

She was trembling herself, but she had been braced to something of
this kind from being a woman herself, and was not so intimidated.
Carroll strove to speak again. Minna Eddy suddenly joined in her
torrent of vituperation with the dress-maker's. She caught up the
soft-soap idea with a peal of laughter more sustained than that of
Madame Griggs, for she had a better poise of mentality, and her wrath
was untempered with the grief and self-pity of a small, helpless
woman who was fitted by nature for petting rather than for warfare.

"Soft soap!" shouted Minna Eddy, while her small husband vainly
clutched at her petticoats. "Soft soap! Lord! I makes my own soft
soap. I has plenty to clean with. I don't want no soft soap. I want
money." She laughed loud and long, a ringing, mocking peal. Madame
Griggs's loud sobbing united with it. The dissonance of unnatural
mirth and grief was ghastly.

"Good God! Hear them!" whispered Sigsbee Ray to the druggist.

"I'd rather owe fifty men than one woman," the druggist whispered
back.

Lee edged nearer the women and strove to speak. He had a purpose.

Carroll, gazing at the women in a fascinated way, again opened his
mouth in vain, and again Anna dragged backward at his arm.

"For Heaven's sake, Arthur, come out of this," she whispered, and he
yielded for the second. He let himself be impelled to the door, then
suddenly he recovered himself and stepped forward with an accession
of dignity and authority which carried weight even in the face of
hysterical unreason. He raised his hand and spoke, and there was a
hush. Madame Griggs and Minna Eddy remained quiet, like petrified
furies, regarding the man's pale face of assertive will.

"I beg you to be quiet a moment and listen to me," he said. "I can do
nothing for any of you to-night, and, what is more, I will not do
anything to-night. It is impossible for me to deal with you in such
an unexpected fashion as this, in such numbers. I have not gone into
bankruptcy; no meeting of my creditors had been called. I have and
you have no legal representative here. Now I am going, and I advise
you all to do likewise. I beg you to ex