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Rosenstein, who was a lean man, with a much-lined face, cast a glance at himself in the looking-glass, and heaved an odd sigh as he turned away to get his hat. "You don't seem to be much stuck on your looks, old man," remarked Amidon. Rosenstein cast a perfectly good-humored but rather melancholy look at Amidon. "No; I never was," he replied, soberly.
"Not you," replied Rosenstein, with unexpected repartee, and was going out amid a chorus of glee at Amidon's discomfiture when another man darkened the doorway, and the storekeeper fell back as Captain Carroll entered amid a sullen silence. The postmaster rose, and in a second the small man and Amidon followed his example.
"I've got something important to say to you," the girl went on, when she realized that Stephen intended to dismiss the subject of the hotel, as he had dismissed the subject of the interview. "That's the reason I wired. But I won't speak a word till you've told me what your brother and the Duchess of Amidon think about you and me." "There's nothing to tell," Stephen answered almost sullenly.
A kindly look overspread the sleek, conceited face of the man. His forebears were from Alabama. His father had been a small white slave-owner who had drifted North, in a state of petty ruin after the war, and there Amidon, who had been a child at the time, had grown up and married the thrifty woman who supported him.
Amidon, thus defended, chuckled also, albeit rather foolishly, and slouched to the door. "Guess I'll drop up and git the Sunday paper. I'll be in later on, John," he mumbled. He had the grace to be somewhat ashamed both by the attack and by the defence, and was for edging out, but stopped on the threshold of the door, arrested by something which the small man said.
He offered a cigar to Lee and to the druggist, who sat next on the other side. "Been out of town?" asked the druggist. "Yes," replied Carroll. Drake looked at him hesitatingly, but Amidon, speaking stiffly and cautiously, put the question directly: "Where you been, cap'n?" "A little journey on business," Carroll answered, easily, lighting his cigar. "When did you get home?" asked Amidon.
"Pretty spry for an old boy," remarked the postmaster as the carriage rolled away. "Oh, he's Southern," returned Amidon, easily. "That is why. Catch a Yankee his age with joints as limber. The cold winters here stiffen folk up quick after they get middle-aged." "You don't seem very stiff in the joints," said Drake, jocularly. "Guess you are near as old as that man."
"I don't suppose it is worth the paper it is written on," said Rosenstein, with his melancholy accent, frowning intellectually over the slip of paper. "He gave the dressmaker one, too," said Amidon, "and she is tickled to death with it. The daughter had already asked her to take back a silk dress she had made for her, and she has sold it for something.
"And, Miss Larrabee," continued Beverly in his solemnest tones, "A young man who will put his arm around a girl will go further yes, Miss Larabee much further. He will kiss her!" Whereat he nodded his head and shook it at the awful thought. Miss Larrabee drew in a shocked breath and gasped: "Do you really think so, Mr. Amidon? I couldn't imagine such a thing!"
"They have formed a trust," said Amidon, deserting his partisanship, now that it had assumed this phase of harmless jocularity. But the boy at bay, as the laughter at his expense increased, was fairly frantic. He lost what he had hitherto retained, his self-possession.
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