“The train ought to be here now,” said George Witherspoon, looking at his watch.

“Do you know exactly what train he is coming on?” his wife asked.

“Yes; he telegraphed again from Memphis.”

“You didn’t tell me you’d got another telegram.”

“My dear, I thought I did.  The truth is that I’ve been so rushed and stirred up for the last day or so that I’ve hardly known what I was about.”

“And I can scarcely realize now what I’m waiting for,” said a young woman.  “Mother, you look as if you haven’t slept any for a week.”

“And I don’t feel as if I have.”

George Witherspoon, holder of the decisive note in the affairs of that great department store known as “The Colossus,” may not by design have carried an air that would indicate the man to whom small tradesman regarded it as a mark of good breeding to cringe, but even in a place where his name was not known his appearance would strongly have appealed to commercial confidence.  That instinct which in earlier life had prompted fearless speculation, now crystalized into conscious force, gave unconscious authority to his countenance.  He was tall and with so apparent a strength in his shoulders as to suggest the thought that with them he had shoved his way to success.  He was erect and walked with a firm step; he wore a heavy grayish mustache that turned under; his chin had a forceful squareness; he was thin-haired, nearing baldness.  In his manner was a sort of firm affability, and his voice was of that tone which success nearly always assumes, kindly, but with a suggestion of impatience.  His eyes were restless, as though accustomed to keep watch over many things.  When spoken to it was his habit to turn quickly, and if occasion so warranted, to listen with that pleasing though frosty smile which to the initiated means, “I shall be terribly bored by any request that you may make, and shall therefore be compelled to refuse it.”  He was sometimes liberal, though rarely generous.  If he showed that a large disaster touched his heart, he could not conceal the fact that a lesser mishap simply fell upon his irritated nerves; and therefore he might contribute to a stricken city while refusing to listen to the distress of a family.

Mrs. Witherspoon was a dark-eyed little woman.  In her earlier life she must have been handsome, for in the expression of her face there was a reminiscence of beauty.  Her dimples had turned traitor to youth and gossiped of coming age.  Women are the first to show the contempt with which wealth regards poverty, the first to turn with resentment upon former friends who have been left in the race for riches, the first to feel the overbearing spirit that money stirs; but this woman had not lost her gentleness.

The girl was about nineteen years of age.  She was a picture of style, delsarted to ease of motion.  She was good-looking and had the whims and the facial tricks that are put to rhyme and raved over in a sweetheart, but which are afterward deplored in a wife.