Nobody answered him. Nobody knew. Each was intent upon himself, and Nancy Sharp was the most intent of all. She had heard the news in White’s Row, where as usual on Monday morning she was busy over her washtub. For a moment she seemed paralyzed, and stood with her mouth wide open and a wet towel dangling high in the air and dripping up her arms and down to the floor. Then she started for the scene of action, outrunning every one who joined her. If she was excited at the great run, she was now a howling hyena, threatening to tear out Grey’s heart if she could get at him.
“All my savings in hard, round silver dollars gone, and wasn’t it only Saturday I put in the last, and he took it—the wretch, knowin’ he was busted!” she said, and this was the plaint of three or four more who had hurried to place their money with the man they trusted, and for whom now there were not names bad enough.
Even Louie, the favorite of the town, was greeted with a low hiss from some quarter as she rode into their midst and, dismounting, said:
“Hasn’t father appeared? He must be in the bank. Open the door, somebody.”
She looked helplessly round, while many voices cried:
“Yes, open the door, and bring him out and make him tell us what he has done with our money, or we’ll hang him up on a tree,” one brutal fellow, who had only twenty dollars in the bank, said.
“Easy enough to tell. Spent it in fine carriages, and horses, and diamonds, and pianos, and party gowns,” some one replied.
“And hundred-dollar bicycles!” was added, with a glance at Louie, who was leaning on her wheel, sick at heart as she heard what was said, and thought how soon the loss of money would transform seeming friends into cruel foes.
She had beckoned the cashier to her, and asked for a key. On being told that her father had both, she said:
“I am sure he is here. He is not at home. We must get to him somehow.”