Motionless, Duncan watched him go, and for several minutes thereafter stood without stirring, lost in thought. Then his quaint, deprecatory grin dawned. He found a handkerchief and mopped his forehead.
"Whew!" he whistled. "I wouldn't go through that again for a million dollars."
Gradually the smile faded. He puckered his brows and drew down the corners of his mouth. Thoughtfully he ran a hand into his pocket and produced the little crumpled wad of bills of small denominations, representing all he had left in the world. Smoothing them out on the counter, he arranged them carefully, summing up; then returned them to his pocket.
"Harry," he observed—"Harry said I couldn't get rid of that stake in a year!...
"He doesn't know what a fast town this is!"
[ XIII ]
THE BUSINESS MAN AND MR. BURNHAM
It was, perhaps, within the next thirty minutes that Betty (who had been left in charge of the store while Duncan, with coat and collar off and sleeves rolled above his elbows, hacked and pounded and pried and banged at the packing-cases in the backyard) sought him on the scene of his labours.
She waited quietly, a little to one side, watching him, until he should become aware of her presence. What she was thinking would have been hard to define, from the inscrutable eyes in her set, tired face of a child. There was no longer any trace of envy, suspicion or resentment in her attitude toward the young man. You might have guessed that she was trying to analyse him, weighing him in the scales of her impoverished and lopsided knowledge of human nature, and wondering if such conclusions as she was able to arrive at were dependable.
In the course of time he caught sight of that patient, sad little figure, and, pausing, panting and perspiring under the July sun, cheerfully brandished his weapon from the centre of a widespread area of wreckage and destruction.