"Good morning, Mrs. Jim," he said. "How's your husband?"
"Jim's better, thank you," she replied, and the sound of her own confident words dispelled the clouds.
Inches looked at her narrowly, and then he began pulling the ears of a mounted fox-skin that was lying on the counter, as he remarked casually: "Hope you got rid of your 'H. O. P.' in time."
"In time?" she asked. "In time? What do you mean?"
"Why, before they closed down. You sold out, I hope?"
There was a sudden catch in her breath.
"Yes, I sold out some time ago."
"Glad of that," he declared, with very evident relief, suddenly losing interest in the fox's ears. Inches had none of Dayton's prejudices in regard to woman's "sphere," but he was none the less rejoiced to know that this particular woman, with the tired-looking eyes, had not "got hurt," as he would have put it.
"It's been a bad business all round," he went on, waxing confidential as he was prone to do. "Why, I knew a man that bought twenty thousand shares at a dollar-ten three weeks ago, just before she closed down, and he's never had the sand to sell."
"What could he get to-day?" Marietta asked. Her voice sounded in her ears strange and far away.