“I should think that woman was dressed in paper bags by the noise she makes,” Sam Riggs remarked to the old clerk when the office door had closed behind her.

“I should think it would kinder take her mind off things she starts out to do,” remarked Price.  The rattle of the oscillating petticoats had distracted his own mind from a nice calculation as to the amount of a bill for a fractional amount of citron at a fractional increase in the market-price.  The old clerk was about to send a cost slip with some goods to be delivered to a cash customer.

“Yep,” responded Sam Riggs.  “I should think she’d git rattled with sech a rattlin’ of her petticoats.”  The boy regarded this as so supernaturally smart that he actually blushed with modest appreciation of his own wit, and tears sprang to his eyes when he laughed.  But when he glanced at his fellow-clerk, Price was calculating the cost of the citron, and did not seem to have noticed anything unusual in the speech.  Riggs, who was easily taken down, felt immediately humiliated, and doubtful of his own humor, and changed the subject.  “Say,” he whispered, jerking his index-finger towards the office door, “you don’t suppose she is settin’ her cap at the boss, do you?”

“Well, I guess she’d have to take it out in settin’,” replied the old clerk, in scorn.  He had now the price of the citron fixed in his head, and he trotted to the standing desk at the end of the counter to enter it.

“I guess so, too,” said Riggs.  “Guess she’d have to starch her cap stiffer than her petticoats before she’d catch him.”  Again Riggs thought he must be funny, but, when the other clerk did not laugh, concluded he must have been mistaken.

The conference in the office was short, and Price had hardly gotten the slip made out when Madame Griggs emerged.  Indeed, she had not accepted Anderson’s proffer of a chair.

“No,” said she, “I can’t set down.  I ’ain’t got but a minute.  Two of my girls is went on their vacation, an’ I ’ain’t got nobody but Bessie Starley, an’ I’ve promised Mis’ Rawdy she should have her new silk skirt before Sunday to wear to Coney Island.  Mr. Rawdy has made so much on hiring his carriages for the weddin’ that he has bought his wife a new black silk dress, an’ now he is goin’ to take her to Coney Island Sunday, and hire the Liscom boy to take his place drivin’.  Now what I come in here for was—­” Madame Griggs lowered her voice; she drew nearer Anderson, and her anxious whisper whistled in his ear.  “What I want to know is,” said she, “here’s Mr. Rawdy, an’ I hear the caterer, were paid in advance, an’ Blumenfeldt was paid the day after the weddin’, an’ I ain’t, an’ I wonder if I’m goin’ to be.”

“Have you sent in your bill yet?” inquired Anderson.

“No, I ‘ain’t, but Captain Carroll asked Blumenfeldt for his bill an’ he paid the others in advance, an’ he ’ain’t asked for my bill.”

“I do not see why you distress yourself until you have sent in your bill,” Anderson said, rather coldly.