"I had Morgan on the wire all right--and the fool operator cut me off!" Sally snipped her wet fingers in my face. "Hello, fool operator," she said. "Hello, yourself," said I. "But oh, Sally, listen to that wind, and tell me how it sounds to you. A wet hug if you guess the answer." "To me," said Sally, "it sounds plausible." And she got herself hugged. III I don't believe that anybody slept much Saturday night. You never heard such a storm in your life. It seemed to Sally and me, who would have been the chief sufferers if it _had_ blown down, that our comfortable, brand-new marble house flapped like a flag. Every now and then there came a tremendous crack from one part of the island or another; and each time Sally would say, "There goes my favorite elm," or I would say, "There goes that elm again." Most of the men came down to breakfast Sunday morning. What with the storm and the worry about stocks keeping them awake most of the night, they were without exception nervous and cross, particularly Billoo. He looked like an owl that had been first stuffed and then boiled. Blenheim told me later that at various times during the night he had carried four several pints of champagne to Billoo's room; and at 7 A.M., bicarbonate of soda and aromatic spirits of ammonia. "I tell you, Sam," said Billoo crossly, "I've been awake all night thinking what it would mean to some of us--yes, me!--if this storm should wreck that ferry-boat of yours." A lot of wet snow and wind hit the dining-room windows a series of rattling slaps. "She's a good boat, Sam, but smallish to ride out such a storm as this." "What a goat you are, Sam," said Tombs, also crossly, "not to keep two ferry-boats, so that if one breaks down you have the other." "When we made up our minds to spend the winter here," I said, "I ordered another; in fact, two. But they're still building; and besides, what if the _Hobo_ does break down? There's plenty to eat and drink, I hope. Nobody would suffer much." "No," said Billoo, "it would be no suffering for a business man to be storm-bound here during a probable panic in Wall Street! "I'm tired," I said, "of hearing you refer to yourself or any of these gentlemen as business men. You always gamble; and when you're in good-luck you gambol, and when you aren't, you don't. What makes me sickest about you all is that you're so nauseatingly conceited and self-important. You all think that your beastly old Stock Exchange is the axle about which the wheel of the world revolves, and each of you thinks, privately, that he's the particular grease that makes it revolve smoothly." "Well," said Billoo, "you know that the presence on the floor of one steady, conservative man may often avert a panic." "Show me the man," I said. "Has any one here ever caused a panic or averted one? But you all lose money just as often because you're on the spot, as make it. Wouldn't you all be the richer for an absence now and then?"