“Tap, tap, tap—­cash, 46; tap, tap—­cash, 63,” was the leading strain in this din of extensive barter and petty transaction.  The Colossus boasted that it could meet every commercial demand; supply a sewing-machine needle or set up a saw-mill; receipt for gas bills and water rates or fit out a general store.  Under one roof it held the resources of a city.  Henry was startled by its immensity, and as he followed Witherspoon through labyrinths of bright gauzes and avenues of somber goods, he perceived that a change in the tone of the hum announced the approach of the master.  And it appeared that, no matter what a girl might be doing, she began hurriedly to do something else the moment she spied Witherspoon coming toward her.  The quick signs of flirtation, signals along the downward track of morality, subsided whenever this ruler came within sight; and the smirk bargain-counter miss would actually turn from the grinning idiocy of the bullet-headed fellow who had come in to admire her and would deign to wait on a poorly dressed woman who had failed to attract her attention.

The offices of the management were on the first floor, and Henry was conducted thither and shown into Witherspoon’s private apartment—­into the calico, bombazine, hardware and universal nick-nack holy of holies.  The room was not fitted up for show, but for business.  Its furniture consisted mainly of a roll-top desk, a stamp with its handle sticking up like the tail of an excited cat, a dingy carpet and several chairs of a shape so ungenial to the human form as to suggest that a hint at me desirability of a visitor’s early withdrawal might have been incorporated in their construction.

“I will see if Colton has come down,” Witherspoon remarked, glancing through a door into another room.  “Yes, there he is.  He’s coming.  Mr. Colton,” said Witherspoon, with deep impressiveness, “this is my son Henry.”

The old man bowed with a politeness in which there was a reminder of a slower and therefore a more courteous day, and taking the hand which Henry cordially offered him, said:  “To meet you affects me profoundly, sir.  Of course I am acquainted with your early history, and this adds to the interest I feel in you; but aside from this, to meet a son of George Witherspoon must necessarily give me great pleasure.”

“Brother Colton is from Maryland,” Witherspoon remarked, and a sudden shriveling about the old man’s mouth told that he was smiling at what he had long since learned to believe was a capital hit of playfulness.  And he bowed, grabbled up a dingy handkerchief that dangled from him somewhere, wiped off his shriveled smile, and then declared that if frankness was a mark of the Marylander, he should always be glad to acknowledge his native State.