"An' I'll tell you somethin' more," the contractor, after moving away a step, returned to the counter and shook the coat in the air, "I live up on the Crescent. Yoe know that"—the contractor's head oscillated laterally, like a slowly-stirred punching-bag, while he gave this forth—"and yoe know that a bunch o' trade comes off o' that same Crescent street. You won't get none of it—none that I ken ketch an' head off. Understand!"
Joseph Benwell, coming quietly around the end of the counter, opened the door leading to the street. Holding it open, he turned to Sir Thomas Harrison pleasantly.
"I am very sorry, sir," he said, "that we have been unable to serve you. Good evening."
Harrison, noisome with the gross perspiration of temper, brushed out.
"He's sure one daisy, ain't he." This from Gary, the dyer's bookkeeper, whose shirt-sleeved elbow supported a slim torso that leaned above Benwell's ledger.
The proprietor stooped and picked up a vociferous tweed hat—not his—which had lain for some time unnoticed on the floor, beneath its hook.
"Sir Thomas," he said, in his mild and temperate way, as he dusted the hat off with his elbow and hung it up, "is a man who deserves great credit for his energy and push—even though sometimes that energy may be a bit misdirected. Never say uncomplimentary things, Gary—especially about one who has just paid us a distinct compliment by selecting us instead of one of our competitors to offer his bit of work to."
Sir Thomas Harrison, about to step into his automobile, paused cholerically at the sound of a voice which interposed, humbly but audibly, with the apparently irrelevant observation:
"Shoelaces, sir?"
The contractor swung about. A brown leather face looked up at him from across the sidewalk, where Jim McMunn, the pencil and shoestring man, stood on his two six-inch stumps of leg. Sir Thomas cast his overcoat across the back of the auto seat, thrust his square-palmed hand in his pocket, drew out a mighty roll of bills, and stripped one off. Thrusting the rest of the roll back in his pocket, Harrison held up the "greenback" he had kept out. It was a double-width five hundred dollar note.