“I think you ought to go and tell her, Mr. Britt,” Vaniman demurred.  “And my standing with Mr. and Mrs. Harnden—­”

“I guess your standing will be better from now on,” Britt broke in, twisting his face into a wry smile.  “I left Harnden with a hot ear on him last night!  Furthermore, you’ll have to ask her.  She declared that if her father or mother or I tried to change her mind about coming back here we’d be wasting breath.  Go on!  I’ll tend bank.”

When Frank returned with Vona a half hour later the president beamed on them through the wicket.  He immediately left the bank office, giving the bookkeeper a paternal pat on the shoulder as he passed her, calling her a good girl.  And then the business of the Egypt Trust Company settled back into its usual routine.

During the day customers came to the wicket with notes sanctioned by the president’s O. K. and his sprawling initials; Mr. Britt did not trouble himself by consulting the directors in regard to ordinary loans.  He was well settled in his autocracy by virtue of the voting proxies which he handled for stockholders, although he had only a modest amount of his own money invested in the stock of the bank.  Mr. Britt could use his own money to better advantage.  He was permitted to make a one-man bank of the Trust Company because nobody in Egypt ventured to dispute his sapience as a financier.

The customers who came that day were plainly having a hard time of it in controlling their desire to share some of their emotions with the cashier.  But Vaniman’s stolid countenance did not encourage any confidences.

Some of the repression he exercised in the case of customers extended to his communion with Vona during the slack times of the business day.  There seemed to be a tacit agreement between them to keep off the topic of what had happened the night before.  Words could not have added to their understanding of their mutual feelings.  That understanding had established for them the policy of waiting.  Though Frank said but little to the girl about his talk with the president, he imagined he could feel the tingle of Britt’s handclasp as he remembered the look on Britt’s face, and he pitied the old man.  To go on, seizing every opportunity to make love, would seem like “rubbing it in,” Frank told himself.  He also said something of the sort to Vona, and she agreed with an amiable smile.

And the two of them agreed on one thing, more especially:  Tasper Britt must have had a strange housecleaning of the heart during that vigil in his home on the hill.

Among other convincing evidences of Britt’s transformation was his treatment of Prophet Elias at the end of that day.

The Prophet did not deliver his usual matutinal taunts in front of Britt Block.  But when he came back from the field in the afternoon, he returned from conferences with Egyptian skeptics who had not seen Tasper Britt in his new form, and therefore, perhaps, their assertions had caused Elias to doubt the evidences of his own senses.  At any rate, the Prophet resolved to put the reform of Pharaoh to the test of texts, and he raised his voice and declaimed.