"Oh, no—nothing. Arm amputations are a $100. We are really out $10—more than that with his board and all, but"—his tone was magnanimity itself—"let it go."
When the Deputy-sheriff went out on the works and raised $125 more among Billy Duncan's friends, he handed it to Lutz, the hospital undertaker, and said—
"The best you can do for the money, Lutz. I've got to go to the County seat on a case and I can't be here myself. Billy was a personal friend of mine, so treat him right."
"Sure; we can turn him out first-class for that money; a new suit of clothes and a tony coffin. Any friend of yours I'll handle like he was my own."
There was something slightly jocular in his tone, a flippancy which Dan Treu felt and silently resented. He looked at Lutz in his shiny, black diagonals, undersized, sallow, his meaningless brown eyes as dull as the eyes of a dead fish, and he thought to himself as he walked away—
"That feller's in the right business, and, by gosh, he's thrown in with the right bunch."
The grave-digger's mouth puckered in a whistle when Lutz went to his home to notify him that his services were needed.
"What! Another!"
The undertaker grinned.
"I'm about used up from gittin' robbed of my rest," complained the grave-digger. "This night-work ain't to my taste."