Shortly entered Mr. Bigelow, pausing within the threshold.
“Good-morning, Mr. Babcock. Did you find Michigan City still on the map?”
Mr. Babcock, giving a last flick at his coat-collar before the mirror, turned, listened, and laughed at his senior's little jest. The stenographer, sitting in her corner by the window, smiled and giggled. Young men at desks in the outer office snickered and chuckled over their books. The round-eyed office-boy tee-heed outright, and then, covered with fright and confusion, disappeared behind the water-cooler as the head of the firm passed on to the inner office.
The arrival of Mr. Babcock with a traveling-bag was, it seemed, to be considered important; more important even than the heap of letters that lay ready opened on the mahogany desk. For now Mr. Babcock had been summoned, the stenographer had been dismissed to some work in the outer office, and Mr. Bigelow, closely attentive, and Mr. Babcock, with much to communicate in that low voice of his, were settling down to consider a problem.
“The price appealed to them,” Mr. Babcock was saying, “but they are afraid of Higginson. They admit it. Higginson, they say, has their written order to cut out the timber at the old price. Higginson, on his part, has agreed to deliver the entire bill, two hundred thousand feet or more, at the wharf at Michigan City, by the fourteenth of this month.”
Mr. Bigelow's eyes strayed to his desk calendar.
“Yes,” went on Mr. Babcock, “to-day's the eleventh. That gives us three days to stop it in.”
At this point there was an interruption. As had happened once before when these two gentlemen were talking, the door opened and the small office-boy appeared, catching his breath hurriedly before getting out the words:
“Lady t' see y'u, sir.”
A decisive utterance was hanging on Mr. Bigelow's lips; a hand was raised to make it more emphatic, but the lips closed and the hand fell.