The man seemed to accept him as one having authority to make this demand, and responded mildly, "Well, that's just what I was thinking myself."
"That piano," Gaites went on with unabated violence, "started from Boston at the beginning of the week; and I happen to know that it's been lying two or three days at Burymouth, instead of going on to Lower Merritt, as it ought to have done at once. It ought to have been in Lower Merritt Wednesday afternoon at the latest, and here it is at Kent Harbor Saturday morning!"
The man in the silk cap scanned Gaites's figure warily, as if it might be that of some official whale in disguise, and answered in a tone of dreamy suggestion: "Must have got shifted into the wrong car at Mewers Junction, somehow. Or maybe they started it wrong from Burymouth."
Mrs. Maze was coming rapidly down the platform toward them, leaving the express agent to crawl flaccidly into his den at the end of the passenger-station, with the air of having had all his joints started.
"Just look at this, Mrs. Maze," said Gaites when she drew near enough to read the address on the piano-case. She did look at it; then she looked at Gaites's face, into which he had thrown a sort of stony calm; and then she looked back at the piano-case.
"No!" she exclaimed and questioned in one.
Gaites nodded confirmation.
"Then it won't be there in time for the poor thing's birthday?"
He nodded again.
Mrs. Maze was a woman who never measured her terms, perhaps because there was nothing large enough to measure them with, and perhaps because in their utmost expansion they were a tight fit for her emotions.