The Merivale banks

by Mary Jane Holmes

It was not so easy a matter to shut the doors with that human wall pressing against them, and only the tact of Fred Lansing availed to do it. He was very cool and calm and reassuring, asking the people to stand aside a moment, and telling them the doors should certainly be opened again.

“The judge has just come,” he said, “and this is a great surprise. He wants to hear something about it from his clerks, and can’t very well with so much noise in the street, if the door is open. So, my good lady, if you will please step out, I am sure others will follow you. That’s right; thank you.”

This was to Nancy Sharp, who had fought her way into the vestibule and was holding aloft her bank-book and flourishing her bare, red arms, which showed frequent acquaintance with soapsuds. She had money in both banks, and, although she had not much in White’s, she didn’t propose to lose it, she said, and she at first looked defiantly at Fred Lansing, when he tried to clear the vestibule. But when he beamed upon her a smile which few women ever resisted and called her “my good lady,” she was vanquished at once, and walked out, saying to her companions, who were all women, “Come on, gals, but stick close to the door, so’s to get in the minit it is opened. It will be opened?” and she looked at Fred, who answered:

“Certainly, madam. I give you my word of honor. It will be opened and you will be paid.”

“All right,” and Nancy nodded familiarly to him as she took her place on the steps outside and stood very near to Louie, who had entered her father’s bank at the rear and had come to the front door, where she stared astounded at the scene and thankful that it was not her father’s bank on which the run was made.

There was a brass railing in the centre of the stone steps leading to the entrance of the two banks, and as Louie leaned against it her arm was seized by Nancy, who began to talk loud and volubly of the failure, as she called it, and the loss to her if the judge did not pay.

“I was a fool to put any with him,” she said, “but I thought two places safer than one, and now see what I’ve got by it. Twenty good, round silver dollars in the bank, and every one means a hard day’s work a-washin’—two for the Whites, two for your folks, one for Miss Smith, one for Mrs. Dr. Adams, and one for——”

She would probably have enumerated every family represented by her twenty round silver dollars if Louie had not stopped her with a “Hush-h! Look up there. He is going to speak,” and she pointed to a balcony in the second story, where Judge White stood, waving his hands to enforce silence. He had inquired into matters a little, and learned from his cashier how much had already been drawn from the bank, and about how much currency there was left.

“Godfrey Sheldon’s five thousand was a blow,” the cashier said. “There are three more who have each a thousand deposited. They haven’t appeared yet, and I hope they won’t. It is the small depositors who are making the biggest row, and there is a pile of ’em.”

The judge knew this, and knew, too, that within the last year or two, when his rival had seemed to prosper, he had tried in underhand ways, by sly insinuations and sneers against the Grey Bank, to secure the patronage of these very people, who in a panic lose all sense and reason, and now he was reaping his reward.