Down the street the drug store screen door slapped shut smartly.
"Them five-cent sodas ain't no good anyway!" said the lanky boy. "I wouldn't want none!" the other sighed.
"No," said Mrs. Fry, "he ain't here. He's went to the drug store with a mess of kids. Yuh can set, or yuh can go. He don't care. That's the kind of a man he is."
The man who stood on the Rectory porch said he would wait. As he stepped across the threshold Mrs. Fry recognised him as a doctor who had been uppish and sent in his card, "like he was a King." She looked critically at his boots. "Trackin' in dust all the time——" she muttered. Then she went heavily down the hall, slamming the dining-room door after her.
"He never gets no rest!" she stated aloud to a picture of a dead duck, hanging by its feet. "Never no peace nor no time to smoke!" She glared at the fowl which had been given Father McGowan by Agnes O'Raddle, as she soliloquised. The erstwhile Mr. Fry, who had always been forced to smoke in the backyard, was far away.
"Well?" questioned Father McGowan. The doctor who sat across the table from him leaned forward and began to speak quickly, his breath coming between his quick words in gasps: "My wife's people had the controlling interest in this plant, and I put all my money in it. It had always paid well. A ventilator, it is, which slips beneath a raised window,—simple affair, yet good. Then this Madden man got ahold of an improved article, patented it, and started a manufactory in the same town, started it on a large scale,—advertised extensively.... Well, we're ruined. We can't compete. He sells below cost. He can't want money; he's losing now. Why does he do it? We've done everything. I've offered him——"
The bell of the telephone which stood on the desk rang sharply.
"Pardon," said Father McGowan, and then, "Why, Cecilia!" There was an interval then the doctor heard him say: "Your prettiest dress? Why they're all pretty! Why?" There was a longer interval, then a sharp "What?" from Father McGowan. A silence, and then, "Dear child! I'll be out to-morrow!" Father McGowan hung up the receiver. His manner and voice were changed and softened.
"The little boy is dead," he said to the doctor. "He was happy before he died. He grew very young, and forgot a great deal, the little boy who was in your care, I mean. Now go on, tell me more of this. Will you smoke?"
The fat priest pushed a box of cigars toward the shaking doctor.