The Merivale banks

by Mary Jane Holmes

He shook his fist threateningly at the crowd, one of whom, a ragged boy, called out derisively:

“Shake away, old money bags; nobody’s afraid of you, but my mother wants her fifty dollars, and she’s goin’ to have it. She put ten dollars in Saturday, and nobody told her you was busted.”

The judge did not hear him. He was struggling up the steps, assisted by Fred to the door, where he was met by Herbert, who was white as a corpse, with a scared look on his face.

“Oh, father,” he cried, “I’m so glad you have come. I should have sent for you, but thought you were off in the country driving. There’s the old Harry to pay.”

“Pay him then! There’s money enough,” the judge roared, going behind the screens and facing the two women presenting their claims and demanding their money, which they promptly received.

It was a genuine run, such as small places like Merivale seldom see, and just how it commenced, or why, no one could tell, unless it were Godfrey Sheldon, who was a weak-brained, pig-headed, jealous man, thinking far too much of himself since his one term in the Legislature. He was very proud of his friendship with Judge White, whom he would sometimes slap on the shoulder and call “old boy,” by way of showing his familiarity with the great man of the town. He knew he was the heaviest depositor in the White Bank, and presumed a good deal on that account, and sometimes chafed because no attention was ever paid his family by Mrs. White and not much by Herbert.

“My girls are as good as anybody,” he was wont to say of his two red-headed daughters, who fully concurred with him in his opinion of themselves.

They certainly were as good as the Gibsons, they thought; and when the grand party came to the front and the Gibsons were invited and they were not, their jealousy was at once excited, but did not reach the boiling point, which meant mischief, until a report reached them that Mrs. White had been heard to say that, aside from the Gibsons, she drew the line on all country bumpkins, and especially the Sheldons. This, of course, was an exaggeration of what she did say, but, passing through the many lips it did, it is strange it had not assumed greater proportions by the time it reached and fired the Sheldon household.

The girls were furious, and their father was not far behind them. For him, an Honorable, to be classed with country bumpkins was an insult not to be borne meekly; and, like most small natures, revenge of some sort was his first thought.

But how should he take it? What could he do that a man like Judge White would feel? Suddenly he remembered his money, which he had always kept in the White Bank, and as he was needing a small part of it soon, he would take it all out and deposit it with Tom Grey. There was a man who did not feel so all-fired big, and whose daughter was nice to his girls and had once spent a day at his house and had Sarah and May at a musicale the winter before. Yes, he’d withdraw his money from Bob White and give it to Tom Grey, he decided, without any thought of creating a panic which might result in a run; nor had he any such idea when he spoke to two or three of his neighbors and told them what he was going to do, giving no reason, when asked for one, except that he knew what he was about and accompanying the words with a gesture which was more suggestive than words.