“Why shouldn’t he?” asked Stevens.  “He deserves a good girl, and there’s none better.  If sickness or any sort of trouble comes to a poor man’s door, she’s never far off with her kind words and them things the rich have when they are laid up.”

“Oh, the girl is well enough.”

“You couldn’t say less.  Before your mother died,”—­Mrs. Durgin had died the previous autumn,—­“I see that angil going to your house many a day with a little basket of comforts tucked under her wing.  But she’s too good to be praised in such a place as this,” added Stevens.  After a pause he inquired, “What makes you down on Shackford?  He has always been a friend to you.”

“One of those friends who walk over your head,” replied Durgin.  “I was in the yard two years before him, and see where he is.”

“Lord love you,” said Stevens, leaning back in his chair and contemplating Durgin thoughtfully, “there is marble and marble; some is Carrara marble, and some isn’t.  The fine grain takes a polish you can’t get on to the other.”

“Of course, he is statuary marble, and I’m full of seams and feldspar.”

“You are like the most of us,—­not the kind that can be worked up into anything very ornamental.”

“Thank you for nothing,” said Durgin, turning away.  “I came from as good a quarry as ever Dick Shackford.  Where’s Torrini to-night?”

“Nobody has seen him since the difficulty,” said Dexter, “except Peters.  Torrini sent for him after supper.”

As Dexter spoke, the door opened and Peters entered.  He went directly to the group composed chiefly of Slocum’s men, and without making any remark began to distribute among them certain small blue tickets, which they pocketed in silence.  Glancing carelessly at his piece of card-board, Durgin said to Peters,—­

“Then it’s decided?”

Peters nodded.

“How’s Torrini?”

“He’s all right.”

“What does he say?”

“Nothing in perticular,” responded Peters, “and nothing at all about his little skylark with Shackford.”

“He’s a cool one!” exclaimed Durgin.

Though the slips of blue pasteboard had been delivered and accepted without comment, it was known in a second through the bar-room that a special meeting had been convened for the next night by the officers of the Marble Workers’ Association.

XIV

On the third morning after Torrini’s expulsion from the yard, Mr. Slocum walked into the studio with a printed slip in his hand.  A similar slip lay crumpled under a work-bench, where Richard had tossed it.  Mr. Slocum’s kindly visage was full of trouble and perplexity as he raised his eyes from the paper, which he had been re-reading on the way up-stairs.

“Look at that!”

“Yes,” remarked Richard, “I have been honored with one of those documents.”

“What does it mean?”