“You’d better talk about poor devils,” growled the milkman, Tappan.  “You’d better talk.  Huh! here you be, don’t hev to git to work till eight o’clock, an’ quittin’ at eight nights, and fifteen hundred a year.  You’d better talk, Mr. Ray.  If you was a man gittin’ up at three of a winter’s mornin’, and settin’ out with a milk-route at four, an’ makin’ ‘bout half a penny a quart, an’ cussed at that ’cause it ain’t all cream—­if you was as dead tired as I be this minute you might talk.”

“Well, I’m willing to allow that I am not as hard pushed as you are,” said the postmaster, with magnanimous humility.

“You’d better.  Poor devils, huh!  I guess I know what poor devils be, and the hell they’re in.  Bet your life I do.  Huh!”

“I’m a poor devil ’nough myself, when it comes to that,” said Amidon, “but I reckon you kin speak for yourself when it comes to talkin’ about bein’ in hell, Tappan.  Fur’s I’m concerned, I’m findin’ this a purty comfertable sort of place.”

Amidon was a tall man, and he stretched his length luxuriously as he spoke.  Tappan eyed him malignantly.  He was not a pleasant-tempered man, and now he was both weary and impatient of waiting for his turn with the barber.

“I should think any man might be comfortable, ef he had a wife takin’ boarders to support him, but mebbe if she was to be asked to tell the truth, she’d tell a different story,” he said.  Tappan spoke in a tone of facetious rage, and the others laughed, all except the barber.  He had a curious respect for his landlady’s husband.

“Ef a lady has the undisposition to let her husband subside on her bounty, it is between them twain.  Who God has joined together, let no man set asunder,” said he, bombastically, and even the surly milkman, and Rosenstein under his manipulating razor, when a laugh was dangerous, laughed.  John Flynn, when he waxed didactic, and made use of large words and phrases, was the comic column of Banbridge.

Amidon, thus defended, chuckled also, albeit rather foolishly, and slouched to the door.  “Guess I’ll drop up and git the Sunday paper.  I’ll be in later on, John,” he mumbled.  He had the grace to be somewhat ashamed both by the attack and by the defence, and was for edging out, but stopped on the threshold of the door, arrested by something which the small man said.

“Talkin’ about poor devils, there’s one man in Banbridge ain’t no poor devil.  S’pose you know we’ve got a J. P. Morgan right amongst us?”

“Who?” asked the postmaster; and Amidon, directly now the conversation was thoroughly shifted from himself, returned to his former place.

“I know who he means,” said he, importantly.  “Oh, it’s the man what’s rented the Ranger place.  They say he’s a millionaire.”

The milkman straightened himself interestedly.  “I rather guess he is,” said he.  “They take two quarts of cream every morning, and three quarts of milk.”