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It was eight o'clock, the bank would not open for an hour, she had had the money in the house all the time. The deceitfulness of women! Mr. Cadge's blood rose to his head. His little green eyes smouldered. Fortunately for the widow, Mr. Snavely drove up at that moment on his delivery wagon, and cheerfully agreed to appraise the work.
"Mebbe so, mebbe so, my good man," responded the grocer, genially, "but whatever it's worth, I don't pay for a job until it's finished." At this point Cadge's torrent of eloquence swept away all punctuating pauses and he became slightly incoherent, but the drift of his harangue was that because he had worked like a slave and finished the wall in two days they wanted to rob him of his money.
Job Snavely, garbed in the black broadcloth which he wore one day out of seven, paused in front of Mr. Cadge's door and bade him good morning. "Mornin'," responded the ruffled father. "Your little girl is quite a song bird," continued Mr. Snavely, with his usual facility in making well-meant small-talk more irritating than a hurled brick. "She sings too much," commented Mr.
Winship told me; "an' they say you'n' Sis had ought to be married f'om their house. Good idee, seems to me, though Sis here don't take to it, somehow." "Oh, I suppose I can endure Aunt Frank," said Helen, making savage dabs at Cadge's typewriter; "if you wish it you and John."
"But it was such a little steak, Tom," urged his wife, "and the children were so hungry that I let them finish it." There was no money in the house, and Snavely, the only credit grocer, had closed his shop, so Mr. Cadge's supper that night was bread and cheese without kisses. Sunday was a long-remembered day of misery for Cadge's wife and children, who played the scapegoat for Mr.
"And I'd still be willing to write a receipt for the full seven dollars for six dollars cash," interposed that astute philanthropist. Mrs. Cadge's shrewd, birdlike eyes were half closed in mental computation; ten dollars for the wall and one dollar discount on the grocery bill, that would make eleven dollars clear.
Snavely, "that I have found a small piece of work for you, which will be worth a dollar and a half a day." Cadge's brow was still gloomy.
I was getting out of patience at all this mystery, when, during one of her brief absences, Ethel tapped at my door, and a minute later Kitty Reid dashed at me, while in the doorway appeared Cadge, scratching with one hand in a black bag. "Oh, Helen, Helen," cried Kitty, laughing and half crying, "have you seen Cadge's exclusive?" "Cadge! You were there? Cadge!"
Cadge's steady black eyes controlled him. "Wa-al?" The doctor bowed his head over Helen. I was listening again to her watch that ticked insistently. "Don't tell Father! Don't tell Father!" it said over and over, over and over, louder and louder, until the words echoed from every corner of the room. They must hear! That was why she had left it! "I ast ye w'at ailed my little girl."
Cadge's ideas on the subject were as boundless as hers were limited. Day wages, he affirmed, ranged from two dollars up for common labor, and as building a wall was highly skilled labor he thought three and a half or four dollars per diem would be about right, going on the basis of at least six days of eight hours each. Mr.
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