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At twenty-five, when Claire Boltwood chose to come tearing through his life in a Gomez-Dep, Milt was the owner, manager, bookkeeper, wrecking crew, ignition expert, thoroughly competent bill-collector, and all but one of the working force of the Red Trail Garage.
No man is a hero to his valet; no woman is a beauty to her maid. In and out, to and fro; the social leader, the shop-girl, the maid, the woman of the town, the actress, the thin old spinster and the fat matron, here might they be found. At rare intervals a man was seen to ring the bell, but he was either a bill-collector or a husband in search of his wife.
This merely transferred the scene of it and involved a third party, for there, just outside the ground-glass partition, ostensibly hunting for a book in the revolving case and humming a lively tune, was Elmendorf. Recoiling to avoid contact with the advancing Forrest, the bill-collector backed into the listening tutor and bumped him up against a table.
I've always imagined him with a long beard," said Monty, relief in his voice. "It was not Mr. Jones. We know Jones quite well. This man was a stranger and refused to give his name. He said he would call at Mrs. Gray's this afternoon." "Did he look like a constable or a bill-collector?" asked Monty, with a laugh. "He looked very much like a tramp."
Crego was delighted. Mrs. Congdon did not spare herself. "Helen, she made me feel like a bill-collector! 'All right, said she, 'I'll be there, and left me standing in the middle of the street. You've got to come now, Helen, to preserve my dignity." "I'm wild to come, really. I want to see what she'll do to us 'professional people. Maybe she will patronize us too."
Then she wrote to invite him to late Sunday breakfast at the Gilsons' they made a function of it, and called it bruncheon. The hour was given as ten-thirty; most people came at noon; but Milt arrived at ten-thirty-one, and found only a sleepy butler in sight. He waited in the drawing-room for five minutes, feeling like a bill-collector.
He crawled down again and sought out the janitress, who stopped watching an ice-wagon in the street to say: "I guess you'll be finding him asleep up there, sir. He do be lying there drunk most of the day. His wife's left him. The landlord's give him notice to quit, end of August. Warm day, sir. Be you a bill-collector? Mostly, it's bill-collectors that " "Yes, it is hot."
Nobody knew what construction might be put on such things; Hanka did not have too many friends. Tidemand laughed at the thought that he was fooling the slanderous tongues so capitally. "She came to see me a couple of days ago; I was in my office. I thought at first it was some bill-collector, some dun or other, who knocked at my door; but it was Hanka. Can you guess what she wanted?
Why, the very audacity of your impudence is not without its attraction! Here you come into my house and ask me to stand and deliver a fortune, with all the light and airy assurance of a bill-collector. And the best of it is that you are dead in earnest, too oh, Lord! And he went off into another gale of laughter.
Once the rude door of the square was suddenly smashed open by a struggle from inside, and showed the meek bill-collector at his work, nostrils dilated, lips drawn back over his teeth, and his hands upon a half-maddened sheep. He was attired in strange raiment, having no relation whatever to duster coats or list slippers, and a knife was in his mouth.
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