James read the article from beginning to end.  “I suppose it is news to you,” he said, when he had finished.  He looked at them all with a superior air.  He looked older and more manly than when he had first come in their midst.  He was older and more manly, and he was superior.  The men recognized it, not sullenly nor defiantly, but with the unquestioning attitude of the New Jerseyman when he is really below the scale in birth and education.  Still their faces all expressed malicious cunning and cruel curiosity, which they hesitated to put into words.  They knew that Elliot was to marry Gordon’s niece; they were overawed by both men, but they were afraid of Gordon.

Still Jim Goodman found courage of his meanness and smallness and spoke.  “It seems a strange thing,” he said, “that Doctor Gordon should hev came and went here for years, and all of us thinkin’ his wife were his sister when she were not.”

“Well, what of it?” asked James.

The men stared at one another.

“What of it?” repeated James.  “I don’t suppose there is anything criminal in a man’s calling his wife by his sister’s name.  Doctor Gordon has a sister named Ewing.”

Again the men stared at one another, and Jim Goodman was the only one who had the miserable courage to speak.  “S’pose him an’ her were married,” he said, in a thin voice like the squeal of a fox.

“Which of you wants to be knocked down can make a statement to the contrary,” thundered James.  “Is that what you make of it?”

Goodman shuffled from one foot to the other.  Men nudged shoulders, Goodman spoke.  “Nobody never knows what is true or ain’t true in them newspapers,” he observed, and there was a note of alarm in his voice.

“I did not read a thing in the whole column which even implied such a thing as you intimated,” James said hotly.  “Don’t put it off on the newspapers!”

Then another man spoke, a farmer, tall, dry, lank, and impervious.  He was a man about whom were ill-reports.  His wife had died some years before, and he had a housekeeper, a florid, blonde creature, dressed with dingy showiness, of whom people spoke with covert laughs.  “All we want to know is why Doctor Gordon has never said that her was his wife, and not his sister,” he said in a defiant nasal voice.

The malignant Jim Goodman saw his chance.  He jumped upon it like a spider.  “That’s so,” he said.  “Why didn’t he say she was his housekeeper?” There was a shout of coarse laughter.  The farmer gave a hateful look at Goodman and puffed at a rank pipe.

James was furious, but he saw the necessity of a statement of some kind, and his wits leaped to action.  “Well,” he said, “suppose there was a question of money.”

The crowd pressed closer and gaped.

“Money!” said Goodman.

“Yes, money,” pursued James recklessly.  “Did you never hear of people being opposed to marriages, rich people I mean, and threatening to disinherit a woman if she married the man they did not pick out for her?”