“Reckon Carroll must have gone out West promotin’ to raise a little wind for the weddin’,” he said.

“I haven’t seed him, and I atropined he had not come back yet,” remarked the barber.

Lee looked up from his Sunday paper—­all the men except young Willy Eddy were provided with Sunday papers; he waited patiently for a spare page finished and thrown aside by another.  Besides the odors of soap and perfumed oils and bay-rum and tobacco-smoke, that filled the little place, was the redolence of fresh newspapers, staring with violent head-lines, and as full of rustle as a forest.

Lee looked up from his paper, and gave his head a curious, consequential toss.  He had been shaved himself, and his little tuft of yellow beard was trimmed to a nicety.  He looked sleek and well-dressed, and he had always his indefinable air of straining himself furtively upon tiptoe to reach some unattainable height.  Lee’s consequentiality had something painful about it at times.

“I guess Captain Carroll hadn’t any need to go out West promoting.  I rather think he can find all the business he wants right here,” he said.

Tappan the milkman, bearded and grim, looked up from an article on the coal strike.  “Guess he can find about fools enough right here to work on, that’s right,” said he, and there was a laugh.

Lee’s small blond face colored furiously; his voice was shrill in response.  “Perhaps those he doesn’t work, as you call it, are bigger fools than those he does,” said he.

“Say,” said the milkman, with a snarling sort of humor.  He fastened brutally twinkling eyes on Lee.  Everybody waited; the little barber held the razor poised over Amidon’s chin.  “When do your next dividends come in?” he inquired.

Lee gave an angry sniff, and flirted up his paper before his face.

“Why don’t ye say?” pressed Tappan, with a hard wink at the others.

“I don’t know that it is any of your business,” replied Lee.

“Ask when the millennium’s comin’,” said Amidon, in the chair.

“I wish I was as sure of the millennium as I am of those dividends,” declared Lee, brought to bay.

“Glad you’ve got faith in that dead-beat.  He’s owin’ me for fifteen dollars’ worth of milk-tickets, and I can’t get a dam’ed penny of it,” said Tappan.  He gave the sheet of paper he held a vicious crumple and flung it to the floor, whence little Willy Eddy timidly and softly gathered it up.  “Gettin’ up at four o’clock in the mornin’,” continued the milkman, in a cursing voice, “an’ milkin’ a lot of dam’ed old kickin’ cows, and gittin’ on the road half-dead with sleep, to make a present to whelps like him, goin’ to the City dressed up like Morgan hisself, ridin’ to the station in a carriage he ‘ain’t paid for, with a man drivin’ that can’t git a cent out of him.  Talk about coal strikes!  Lord!  I could give them miners points.  Strikin’ for eight hours a day!  Lord! what’s that?