“Come away, Arthur,” she whispered.

She was trembling herself, but she had been braced to something of this kind from being a woman herself, and was not so intimidated.  Carroll strove to speak again.  Minna Eddy suddenly joined in her torrent of vituperation with the dress-maker’s.  She caught up the soft-soap idea with a peal of laughter more sustained than that of Madame Griggs, for she had a better poise of mentality, and her wrath was untempered with the grief and self-pity of a small, helpless woman who was fitted by nature for petting rather than for warfare.

“Soft soap!” shouted Minna Eddy, while her small husband vainly clutched at her petticoats.  “Soft soap!  Lord!  I makes my own soft soap.  I has plenty to clean with.  I don’t want no soft soap.  I want money.”  She laughed loud and long, a ringing, mocking peal.  Madame Griggs’s loud sobbing united with it.  The dissonance of unnatural mirth and grief was ghastly.

“Good God!  Hear them!” whispered Sigsbee Ray to the druggist.

“I’d rather owe fifty men than one woman,” the druggist whispered back.

Lee edged nearer the women and strove to speak.  He had a purpose.

Carroll, gazing at the women in a fascinated way, again opened his mouth in vain, and again Anna dragged backward at his arm.

“For Heaven’s sake, Arthur, come out of this,” she whispered, and he yielded for the second.  He let himself be impelled to the door, then suddenly he recovered himself and stepped forward with an accession of dignity and authority which carried weight even in the face of hysterical unreason.  He raised his hand and spoke, and there was a hush.  Madame Griggs and Minna Eddy remained quiet, like petrified furies, regarding the man’s pale face of assertive will.

“I beg you to be quiet a moment and listen to me,” he said.  “I can do nothing for any of you to-night, and, what is more, I will not do anything to-night.  It is impossible for me to deal with you in such an unexpected fashion as this, in such numbers.  I have not gone into bankruptcy; no meeting of my creditors had been called.  I have and you have no legal representative here.  Now I am going, and I advise you all to do likewise.  I beg you to excuse me.  I know you all, I know the amount of my indebtedness to you all, and I promise you all, if I live, the very last dollar I owe you shall be paid.  You must, however, give me a little time, or nobody will get anything.  I will communicate with you all later on.  Nobody shall lose anything, I say.  Now you must excuse me.”

“Look at him; he’s sick,” whispered the pretty stenographer to the other, whose soft, little sob of response alone broke the hush as Carroll went out with his sister at his side.  Their shadows moved across the room as they ascended the stairs in the hall.  The creditors, left alone, regarded one another in a hesitating fashion.  The two women, Minna Eddy and Estella Griggs, remained quiet.  Presently the two butchers and the dry-goods merchant, standing about the Oriental rug, quite a fine Bokhara, resumed their whispered colloquy regarding it, then they went out.  Lee began talking to the druggist and the postmaster, with Willie Eddy at his elbow listening eagerly.