He gave his head a nod, dropped his hands and turned from her. As he moved, a small spider that had been hidden among the papers on the desk started to scuttle over the yellow blotting pad. It caught his eye.
“Look there,” he said, indicating it, “that little spider thinks it can have things all its own way on my desk. But—” and he laid his great thumb on it, crushing it to a black smudge—“that’s what happens to it. Now, Mrs. Dominick Ryan, that’s not the first little spider that’s come to grief trying to run amuck through my affairs. And it don’t seem, as things look now, as if it was going to be the last. It’s not a healthy thing for little spiders to think they can run Bill Cannon.”
He rubbed his soiled thumb on the edge of the blotter, and Berny looked at the stain that had been the spider.
“Best not butt into places where little spiders are not wanted,” he said, and then looking at her sidewise, “Well, is it good-by?”
Something in the complete obliteration of the adventurous insect—or the words that had accompanied its execution—chilled Berny. She was not frightened, nor less determined, but the first ardor of her defiance was as though a cold breath had blown on it. Still she did not intend to leave, ignominiously withdrawing before defeat. She wanted to say more, rub it in that she knew the reason for his action, and let him see still plainer in how slight esteem she held his daughter. But the interlude of the spider had been such a check that she did not know exactly how to begin again. She stood for a moment uncertain, and he said,
“Will you take the money?”
“No!” she said loudly. “Don’t ask me that again!”
“All right,” he answered quietly, “that ends our business. Do you know your way out, or shall I ring for Granger to see you to the door?”
There was a bell on the desk and he extended his hand toward it. She guessed that Granger was the polished and deferential young man who had greeted her on her entrance, and the ignominy of being escorted out under a cloud—literally shown the door by the same youth, probably no longer polished or deferential, was more than she could bear.
“I’m going,” she said fiercely. “Don’t dare to touch that bell! But just be sure of one thing, Bill Cannon, this is not the last you or your daughter will hear of me.”