He laughed.
“No, not with you, old girl. I’m going to find my sweetheart.”
He looked down at her. They were near a street lamp. She screamed. He seized her by the shoulders and dragged her closer to the light. His fingers dug her flesh, and his eyes gleamed.
“Joan!” he gasped.
BEN T. ALLEN, ATTY., VS. HIMSELF
By William H. Hamby
“Lawyers always get theirs.” The hardware dealer on the north side spoke with some bitterness and entire literalness. The check for one hundred and seventy-five dollars just wrenched from its stub bore “Ben T. Allen, Atty.,” in the middle, and “Peter Shaw Hardware Co.,” at the bottom.
Peter, by the aid and advice of counsel, had been resisting the payment of a merchant’s tax of five dollars a year which the alleged city of Clayton Center had insisted on collecting. The case had now been in the supreme court two years. This check was merely “on account.”
The check had occasioned the remark, but the bitterness back of it was engendered by another case, in which Peter had been prosecuting his claims for the affection of Betty Lane, court stenographer. Attorney Allen appeared against him this time instead of for him, and in both cases Peter seemed to be getting the worst of it.
But that, of course, is all in the viewpoint. At that moment Attorney Allen stood by the front window of his offices, his thick hair tangled like the fleece of a black sheep after a restless night, his soul splashing in a vat of gloom. Betty Lane had just passed through the courthouse yard on her way to work. Nature had made Betty very attractive, but her job had made her independent.