"Look at that," he said, holding the wheat before him.
Bud looked at it incredulously. "That's not mine," he said.
Young Steadman's eyes were on him exultingly. He had got even at last, he thought.
"We'll have to see about this, Bud," the elevator man said sternly.
The other bag was emptied, and Bud saw with his own eyes that the middle of the bag was filled with frozen wheat! He turned dizzy with shame and rage. The machinery in the elevator with its deafening, thump-thump-thump, seemed to be beating into his brain. He leaned against the wall, pale and trembling.
The same instinct which prompted Tom Steadman when he hit Libby Anne Cavers prompted him now. "I thought you said you wouldn't do such a thing since you joined the Church," he said, with an expression of shocked virtue.
Bud's cup of bitterness was overflowing, and at first he did not notice what had been said.
Tom took his silence to mean that he might with safety say more. "I guess you're not as honest as you'd like to have people think, and joinin' the Church didn't do you so much good after all."
Bud came to himself with a rush then, and young Tom Steadman went spinning across the floor with the blood spurting from his nose.
* * *