He wrapped it for her carefully, even regretfully, and held the packet for a moment, caressing it with his hands, while she produced a dollar from her purse and took it from him.
“Call again. I have been here for twenty years; Congdon, Dameron Block.”
“Yes, Dameron Block,” repeated Zelda.
The constables and loungers on the sidewalk in front of the justice’s court stared at her as she came out and glanced for a moment at the upper windows of the building. A galvanized iron sign at the eaves bore the name “Dameron Block, 1870,” in letters that had long since lost the false aspect of stone given to them originally by gray paint.
Zelda went into the dim entrance and read the miscellaneous signs that were tacked there. One of them was inscribed “E. Dameron, Room 8”; and passing on she presently came to a frosted-glass door, where the same legend was repeated. It was late in the afternoon; possibly her father would go home with her, she thought, and turned the knob.
She entered a dark room on a courtway, evidently used as a place of waiting; there was another room beyond, reached by a door that stood half-open. Her father was engaged; his voice rose from the inner room; and she took a chair by the outer door of the waiting-room. She looked about the place curiously. On a long table lay in great disorder many odds and ends—packages of garden-seed under dust that afforded almost enough earth to sprout them; half a dozen fence pickets tied together with a string; and several strata of old newspapers. On the floor in a corner lay a set of harness in a disreputable state of disrepair; and pasted on the walls were yellowed sheets of newspapers containing tables of some sort. Zelda did not know what these were, though any one of the loafers on the curbstone could have enlightened her as to their character,—they were the official advertisements of the sales of tax titles. Ezra Dameron always “talked poor,” and complained of the burden of taxes and street improvements; but he had been the chief buyer of tax titles in the county.
“I’m sure that I’ve been very lenient, very lenient indeed,” Ezra Dameron was saying. “I have, in fact, considered it a family matter, calling for considerate treatment, on the score of my friendship with your husband. If it had been otherwise, I should have been obliged long ago to take steps—steps toward safeguarding the interests—the interests of my trust, I should say.
“But another extension of two years would be sufficient for me to pay. I wish very much for Olive not to know that her schooling was paid for with borrowed money. She gives me all she earns. Her position is assured, and I am putting aside something every month to apply on the debt. We owe nothing else.”
“But two of these notes are already in default, Mrs. Merriam. I have incurred obligations on the strength of them. A woman can’t understand the requirements and exactions of business.”
“I am sorry, very sorry, Mr. Dameron. All I ask is this extension. It can’t be a large matter to you!”