“No,” Joe admitted. “I heard they were good business men, that’s all.”
“Business men!” Wright struggled for appropriate words, and finding none threw out his hands in a protesting gesture. “They’re all that and then some. I wish I had half their business ability. They’re a pair of cold-blooded, dirty-tongued, sewer-rat devils, with the knack of making money hand over fist. And you see how they do it! But they pay up to the day and the cent, and they never squeal when they’re hit, I’ll say that for them.”
“Then we won’t squeal either,” said Joe proudly. “Maybe, after all, they’ll let us down easy.”
“Not them,” said Wright, ungrammatically but positively.
Not two hours afterward a wire was received from Clancy Brothers ordering a large consignment of dressed lumber which they wanted rushed.
“What did I tell you?” said Wright sadly. “And the nerve of them to want it rushed. Rushed! I’ll see them in blazes first. They’ll take their turn, and that’s last.”
This strategic delay was provocative of results. Some days afterward Joe’s telephone rang.
“Is that Misther Kent?” demanded a heavy voice at the other end of the wire. “It is? Well, this is Finn Clancy, talkin’—Finn Clancy of Clancy Brothers. I want to know how about that lumber we ordered. Is ut shipped yit?”
“Not yet,” Joe replied. “We don’t——”
“An’ why the divil isn’t ut?” interrupted Clancy. “Haven’t ye got ut cut?”