Rose beat time for her sister mockingly, and they answered in singsong. "We did not! We did not! But," Nan added, dropping her hands to her sides tragically, "but if we had, oh, sir!" "If you had I should have bought it of you at a premium. It's hard work being a banker for women: they all want ten per cent a month." "Paul Fosdick's things were all guaranteed ten per cent a year," remarked Rose. They all waited for the explosion that must follow the mention of this particular brother-in-law. Nowhere else in town would any one have dared to bring Fosdick, who was believed to be his pet abomination, into a conversation. Even in Hastings he found a kind of joy; the presence of a retired Hamlet among the foliage of the family tree was funny now that he had got used to it; and Amzi had a sense of humor. This little company expected him to explode and he must not disappoint them. The color mounted to his bald dome and his eyes bulged. "Thunder! Rose, play that jiggly funeral march of a marionette!" "I refuse," said Rose, spreading her skirts on the divan, "to do anything so cruel!" "And besides," said Nan, "I bought a share of stock in his brickyard." "Nan Bartlett," said Amzi, planting himself before her, "I will give you a peck of parsnips for that share." "Couldn't take advantage of you, Amzi; and we never eat parsnips. They're bad for the complexion." "Thunder!" he snorted contemptuously. "Thunder" was his favorite, almost his only, expletive, but his thunder was only a single boom without reverberations. His four auditors understood him perfectly, however. Fosdick was always "starting" something. He had even attempted to organize a new cemetery association, which, as Greenlawn was commodious, and as any amount of land adjacent made possible its indefinite expansion, Amzi regarded as an absurd and unholy project. With Fosdick, Amzi had no business relations of any kind. He belonged to the Commercial Club, to be sure, but this was a concession on his part; he never attended any of its meetings. And he had, it was said, requested his enterprising brother-in-law to withdraw his patronage from the Montgomery Bank for reasons never wholly clear to the curious. Fosdick had talked about it in bitterness of spirit; Amzi had not. Amzi never talked of his business. He rarely lost a customer; and if a citizen transferred his account to the First or the Citizens' National, it was assumed that Amzi no longer cared particularly to have that individual on his ledgers. Such a transfer aroused in cautious minds a degree of suspicion, for horses rarely died in Amzi's stable. "Thunder! It's time to go home. Guess the rain's stopped."