"Oh, a long time. He is cashier of my bank, you know. First he was teller, then assistant cashier, and now for five years he has been cashier. The president wants to resign and let him be president, but he hardly has enough stock for that. But Oliver says" (Oliver was Miss Hopkins's brother) "that there isn't a shrewder or straighter banker in the state. Oliver knows him. He says he is a sandy little fellow."
"Well, he is," assented Mrs. Ellis. "It isn't many cashiers would let robbers stab them and shoot them and leave them for dead rather than give up the combination of the safe!"
"He wouldn't take a cent for it, either, and he saved ever so many thousand dollars. Yes, he is brave. I went to the same school with him once, and saw him fight a big boy twice his size—such a nasty boy, who called me 'Fatty,' and made a kissing noise with his lips just to scare me—and poor little Cyril Winslow got awfully beaten, and when I saw him on the ground, with his nose bleeding and that big brute pounding him, I ran to the water-bucket, and poured the whole bucket on that big, bullying boy and stopped the fight, just as the teacher got on the scene. I cried over little Cyril Winslow. He was crying himself. 'I ain't crying because he hurt me,' he sobbed; 'I'm crying because I'm so mad I didn't lick him!' I wonder if he remembers that episode?"
"Perhaps," said Mrs. Ellis.
"Maggie, what makes you think he is falling in love with Sibyl?"
Mrs. Ellis laughed. "I dare say he isn't in love with Sibyl," said she. "I think the main reason was his always riding by here instead of taking the shorter road down the other street."
"Does he always ride by here? I hadn't noticed."
"Always!" said Mrs. Ellis. "I have noticed."
"I am sorry for him," said Lorania, musingly. "I think Sibyl is very much taken with that young Captain Carr at the Arsenal. Young girls always affect the army. He is a nice fellow, but I don't think he is the man Winslow is. Now, Maggie, advise me about the suit. I don't want to look like the escaped fat lady of a museum."
Lorania thought no more of Sibyl's love-affairs. If she thought of the Winslows, it was to wish that Mrs. Winslow would sell or rent her pasture, which, in addition to her own and Mrs. Ellis's pastures thrown into one, would make such a delightful bicycle-track.