Under the Skylights

by Henry Blake Fuller

Yes, they were all there, including the two or three that Little O'Grady had not seen the time before—that first time of all. And the Morrell Twins were there too, one of them remorseful and the other defiant. And Andrew P. Hill, who presided, was in a blue funk—O'Grady could see his chin-beard waggle and could almost hear his teeth chatter; for it was Andrew who had amassed all that Pin-and-Needle collateral, accepting it at the street's own mad valuation. Pin-and-Needle, pushed too far, blown too big, was now shaky at the knees, and Andrew and all the Nine were trembling sympathetically from top to toe. The Grindstone might survive in a single serviceable mass, or it might fly to pieces, dispersed in a thousand useless fragments.

Little O'Grady looked round upon the other faces; they were all like Andrew's. Remorse, shame, contrition sat upon them. Ah, these men knew they had not given fair treatment to him and to Ignace and to Dill and to Preciosa and all the rest. "Just see how they're looking at me!" he said to himself. "Never mind; I won't let up on them. I'll rub it in; I'll drive it home."

What drawn faces! What anxious eyes! What sharp noses!—who had been grinding them? Answer: the Morrell Twins. Not for nothing their long practice in sharpening pins and needles! It had come into play here. Richard had turned the crank and Robin had held down each official proboscis, and the board had winced. Then Richard and Robin had changed places, and the board had groaned. Now Richard and Robin were changing back, and soon the board might scream. "I'll take a hand too," said O'Grady.

He began at once; he gave the discomfited directors no chance to forestall him. He taxed them roundly with their delays, their double-dealings, their invertebrate wabblings. They had blown hot and cold. They had played fast and loose. He and his friends had worked, had thought, had studied, had invented, had torn their very brains from their heads; and what had they to show for it? Nothing; nothing at all. On the contrary——

"Get out of here," said Andrew P. Hill sternly. "This is a business meeting."

"Business meeting!" cried Little O'Grady scornfully. "What do any of you know about business, I'd like to ask? Nobody who wanted to do business by business methods would come here to do it, I'm thinking! No, sir; he'd go to our shop, where we do as we say we will, and do it up sharp and ship-shape, no matter how unreasonable the demands of the shilly-shallying old grannies we have to deal with. Business! You don't bluff me!"

"Take care, young man," said Hill, "or——"

"Or nothing!" cried Little O'Grady undaunted. "And now, for a finisher, you offer us a competition. You wind us, and then ask us to run against a fresh batch that haven't even left the stable! After we've pulled our brains out of our heads strand by strand, you'd have us stuff them back and pull them out all over again, would you? Nobody but a man with cotton-batting for brains could ask a thing like that!"

"Brains!" said Dowd contemptuously. He had always looked upon himself as a lofty intellectual force. In his view there was no great play for intellect outside of finance and law.

Little O'Grady pounced upon this insolence at once. "There's not one of you here, I'll venture, that has had an idea in the last twenty years. You just sit beside your little old machine and turn the crank—why, the crank almost turns itself. We, on the other hand, live on our ideas. We keep alive on our own brains and hearts and blood and emotions——"