“I’ll fix you! This’ll be the worst day’s work you ever did--trying to get smart with me!” “Percival Pulcifer, will you kindly retain your rompers?” said Neighbor with eminent cheerfulness. “Now hark and heed! You did not ask me to sit down. You are not a nice old man. I do not like you much. Don’t you touch that bell!... I shall now sit down. Smoke? No? Well, I’ll roll one.” Rolling one with tender care, Neighbor cocked a pleasant but rather impish eye on the seething financier and blithely prattled on: “Allow me to say, Mr. Banker, that you are overlooking one point: You have a mortgage on my cattle, but you haven’t got any mortgage on me. Got that--clear?” The banker gurgled, black faced and choking. “I’ll ruin you! I’ll smash you!” “Percival Pulcifer Peterkin Pool!” For some reason, not at first easily apparent, these harmless words, which Jones syllabled with great firmness, made the banker writhe. He was wonted to hate--but ridicule was new to him and it hurt. “You might at least show some respect for my gray hairs,” he interrupted indignantly. “Oh, dye your gray hairs!” said Neighbor simply. “Damn your old gray hairs! Shoot, if you must, that old gray head! You’re an old gray-headed scoundrel--that’s what you are!” “Of course,” observed the gray-haired one, gathering himself together, “you will be ready with the money on the nail?” “Now you’re talking sense!” cried Neighbor warmly. “Now you’re getting down to facts.” He threw back his head and sang with great heartiness and zest: “_That day of wrath, that dreadful day; Maryland, my Maryland! When heaven and earth shall pass away; Maryland, my Maryland!_” Clerks beyond the glass partition turned startled faces that way. In that gloomy, haunted counting room, used only to the tones of meekness or despair, the echoes rolled thunderous: “_When, shriveling like a parchèd scroll, The flaming heavens together roll----_” “Will I have the money? _Quien sabe?_ If I don’t the brand is yours--party of the first part, his heirs, executors and assigns forever--nary a whimper from this corner. If I knew for certain I’d tell you, for you have a plain right to know that; but that first line of talk was just sickening drivel. If you held a mortgage on a man’s stuff, would that give you any right to go snoopin’ round and compel him to get in a poker game--hey? Would that look nice? Whaddy you mean, then--how dast you, then--try to tell me not to play poker--meddling in my private affairs? How dare you? Shame-y! Shame-y! S-s-h!” “Jones,” said the other thickly, “I think the devil himself is in you to-day. You poor, headstrong fool! I sent for you to do you a kindness.” Jones rose anxiously. “Shall I call a doctor?” “Well, I did; but you make it hard for me.” “Yes, yes! And you not used to doing kind things, either!” said Jones sympathetically. “Go on. We’re all with you. Give it a name.” Bennett paced up and down, clasping his hands behind his back.