“Must have been dealin’ with a trust, then,” said one of the horsemen, with a loud laugh.  “Guess he’s been cheatin’ ’most everything else.”

“And that lady ain’t his wife, neither,” said Madame Griggs to Tappan.  “That’s his sister.  I made another gown for his wife, a lighter shade, an’ I ’ain’t been paid for that, neither.”  Suddenly she burst into a hysterical wail.  “Oh, dear!” she sobbed.  “Oh, dear!  Here I’ve worked early an’ late.  Here I’ve got up in the mornin’ before light an’ worked till most dawn, an’ me none too strong, never was, and always havin’ to scratch for myself, a poor, lone woman, an’ here I am in debt, an’ they sendin’ out for the money; an’ I’ve worked so hard to build up my business, an’ tried to make things nice, an’ please, an’ here I’ve got to fail.  Oh, dear!” Suddenly she made a weak rush across the room, her silk petticoat giving out a papery rustle, her frizzes vibrating like wire under her hat, crested with ostrich plumes.  She danced up to Carroll and looked at him with indescribable piteousness of accusation.  “Why couldn’t you, if you had to cheat, cheat a man an’ not a woman like me?” she demanded, in her high-pitched tremolo.

Carroll took his cigar from his mouth and looked at her.  His face was quite pale and rigid.  Even Tappan stopped, watching the two.  Madame Griggs held up, with almost a sublimity of accusation, her tiny, nervous, veinous hands.  The fingers were long and the knuckles were slightly enlarged with strenuous pullings of needles and handling of scissors; the forefinger was calloused.  “Look at my hands,” said she.  “See how thin they be.  I’ve worked them ’most to the bone for your folks.  I took a lot of pride in havin’ your daughter look nice when she was married.  If I was a man an’ goin’ to steal, I’d steal from somebody besides a woman with no more strength than I have, all alone in the world, and that’s been knocked hard ever since she can remember.”  Then she brought a stiffly starched little handkerchief from the folds of a small purse, and she wept with a low, querulous wail like a baby.  Standing before Carroll, “Oh, dear!  Oh, dear!  Oh—­dear!” she wailed.

Carroll laid a hand on her shaking shoulder.  It felt to him like a vibrating bone, so meagre it was.  He bent over her and said something that the others did not hear, but her wild rejoinder gave them the key.  She was fairly desperate; all her obsequiousness had disappeared.  She was burning with her wrongs; she even took a certain pleasure in letting herself loose.  She shook her shoulder free from his touch.  She turned on him, her tearful, convulsed face uncovered, her frizzes tossing, as bold and unrestrained in her wrath as was Minna Eddy, who came forward to her side as she spoke.