Sidney watched the girls enter the house and followed them involuntarily. As he passed the bully who had been knocked down, he saw there was a lump like an egg already adorning his jaw.
“Serves him right!” said gentle Sidney Martin to himself.
A little farther on half-a-dozen men stood talking together; one, whom Sidney took to be the auctioneer, was saying meaningly:—
“It’s a bad business bidding for what you don’t want.”
“Yes,” said one of the group, laboriously keeping up the joke. “Yes—for it’s apt to be knocked down to you, and then you’ve got it on your hands.”
“On your jaw, you mean,” said the auctioneer smartly; whereat a laugh went up. Clearly Lanty Lansing had partizans here.
As Sidney reached the doorway within which the girls had vanished, a grey-haired man stepped forth from it.
“Mr. Lansing?” said Sidney, confidently.
His intuitions had not played him false.