Excitement!'" he repeated with a sour laugh. "Yep, I expect a man
could get all the excitement he wanted in _that_ house, especially
if he was her daddy. Poor old man, I don't believe he's got five
thousand dollars in the world, and look how she dresses!"

Ray opened a compartment beneath one of the bookcases, and found a
bottle and some glasses. "Aha," he muttered, "our janitor doesn't
drink, I perceive. Join me?" Mr. Trumble accepted, and Ray
explained, cheerfully: "Richard Lindley's got me so cowed I'm
afraid to go near any of my old joints. You see, he trails me; the
scoundrel has kept me sober for whole days at a time, and I've
been mortified, having old friends see me in that condition; so I
have to sneak up here to my own office to drink to Cora, now and
then. You mustn't tell him. What's she been doing to _you_,
lately?"

The little man addressed grew red with the sharp, resentful
memory. "Oh, nothing! Just struck me in the face with her parasol
on the public street, that's all!" He gave an account of his walk
to church with Cora. "I'm through with that girl!" he exclaimed
vindictively, in conclusion. "It was the damnedest thing you ever
saw in your life: right in broad daylight, in front of the church.
And she laughed when she did it; you'd have thought she was
knocking a puppy out of her way. She can't do that to me twice, I
tell you. What the devil do you see to laugh at?"

"You'll be around," returned his companion, refilling the glasses,
"asking for more, the first chance she gives you. Here's her
health!"

"I don't drink it!" cried Mr. Trumble angrily.

"And I'm through with her for good, I tell you! I'm not your kind:
I don't let a girl like that upset me till I can't think of
anything else, and go making such an ass of myself that the whole
town gabbles about it. Cora Madison's seen the last of me, I'll
thank you to notice. She's never been half-decent to me; cut
dances with me all last winter; kept me hanging round the
outskirts of every crowd she was in; stuck me with Laura and her
mother every time she had a chance; then has the nerve to try to
use me, so's she can make a bigger hit with a new man! You can bet
your head I'm through! She'll get paid though! Oh, she'll get paid
for it!"

"How?" laughed Ray.

It was a difficult question. "You wait and see," responded the
threatener, feebly. "Just wait and see. She's wild about this
Corliss, I tell you," he continued, with renewed vehemence. "S