To them, old Joe Sikes was a “character.” He knew Banker Lansing, and Banker Koontzwiler, and the President of the Excelsior Woodenware Works, and others of their ilk, but he did not know their wives or their daughters. Mr. Link, on the other hand, had a very wide acquaintance with the “newer rich,” as he learnedly called them in placating Mr. Sikes on occasion. He had buried a lot of them, for one thing.
Mr. Sikes was troubled. Not once but half a score of times in the week following his first glimpse of “yaller-headed” Mrs. Flame, he had seen her with Oliver October. She wasn’t, of course, sitting in Oliver’s lap on any of these occasions, but—well, it is enough to say that Mr. Sikes was sorely troubled. He saw Oliver going straight to his doom.
With Jane’s departure for New York he lost all hope.
He had lectured Oliver severely, and, to his grief and astonishment, was laughed at for his pains. So he went to Serepta Grimes.
He rang the Baxter doorbell—and instantly wondered why he had done so. It seemed like a confession of weakness on his part. He sat down on the veranda and waited. It was late in the afternoon of a hot July day, well along toward the end of the month. He sniffed the sultry air, gazed frowningly at the western sky where clouds were gathering in the black pregnancy of storm, and chewed hard on the macerated stub of an unlighted cigar.
Mrs. Grimes came to the door.
“Oh, it’s you, is it? I thought maybe it was Marmaduke Smith back with another telegram.”
“Another what?” demanded Mr. Sikes, with interest.
“He’s brought two up on his bicycle since four o’clock, and he said maybe there’d be more. Two telegrams for Oliver.”
“Why didn’t he take ’em to the store, the little fool? Oliver may have to ketch the six o’clock train. What’s in ’em?”