Cargill was distinctly talking to himself, almost as much as to Bradley. The hardness had gone out of his eyes, and his voice had a touch of unconscious sadness in it.
"Does Miss Wilbur live here?" Bradley asked, to start him off again.
"Yes, she went into the Grange when she was eighteen, just after she graduated from our university here. Had a good deal of your enthusiasm, I should judge. Expected to revolutionize things some way. I don't take very much interest in her public work, but I thoroughly appreciate her literary perception." He had got back to his usual humor.
"Chris, when does the club meet next?"
"Friday night, I believe."
"All right. I'll take you up, and introduce you into the charmed circle. They pride themselves on being modern up there, though I don't see much glory in being modern."
Bradley stood for a moment at the door, looking at this strange scene. It appealed to him with its strangeness, and its suggestion of the great battles on the street which he had read of in the papers. The telegraph machine clicked out every important movement in Chicago and New York. The manager called up his customers, and bawled into the telephone the condition of the market and the significant gossip of the far-off exchange halls. It was so strange, and yet so familiar, that he went away with his head full of those cabalistic sentences—
"New York still hammering away. Partridge quietly buying to cover on the decline."