Randolph had come up, and they had both entered the house, a carriage passed swiftly and both saw it from the parlor window.
“Do you know who's carriage that is?” asked Mrs. Anderson. “It is something new in Banbridge, isn't it?”
“It belongs to those new people who have moved into the Ranger place,” replied Randolph. He wore a light business-suit which suited him, and he looked like a gentleman, as much so as when he had come from a law-office instead of a grocery-store. Indeed, he had been much shabbier in the law-office and had not held his head so high. In the law-office he had constantly been confronted with the possibility of debt. Here he was free from it. He had been smoking, as usual, and there was about his garments an odor of mingled coffee and tobacco. He had been selling coffee, and grinding some. One of his two salesmen was ill, and that was why he was so late. The new carriage rolled silently on its rubber tires along the macadamized road; the high black polish and plate-glass flashed in the sunlight, the coachman in livery sat proudly erect and held his whip stylishly, the sleek horses pranced, seeming scarcely to touch the road with their dainty hoofs.
“Those are fine horses,” said Randolph.
“Yes,” assented his mother. “They must be very wealthy people, I suppose.”
“It looks so,” replied Randolph.
His mother, still staring out of the window, started. “Why,” she said, “the coachman is turning around!”
“Perhaps he has forgotten something at the station,” said Randolph.
“Why, it is stopping here!” cried Mrs. Anderson, wonderingly. The carriage indeed stopped just before the Anderson gate, and remained there perfectly still. The coachman gazed intently at the house, but made no motion to get down. At a window was seen a gentleman's face; past him the fresh face of a girl, also gazing. Randolph looked out, and the gentleman in the carriage made an imperious beckoning motion.
“Why, he is beckoning you!” said Mrs. Anderson, amazedly and indignantly.
Anderson moved towards the door.
“You are not going out when you are beckoned to in that way?” cried his mother.
Anderson laughed. “You forget, mother,” he said, “that a grocer is at the beck and call of his patrons.”
“I am ashamed of you!” she said, hotly, her fair old face flushing, “to have no more pride—”
Anderson laughed again. “I am too proud to have pride,” he said, and went out of the room. He went leisurely down the steps, and crossed the little brick walk to the gate, and then approached the carriage. The gentleman inside, with what seemed an unpremeditated movement, raised his hat. Randolph bowed. Carroll smiled in the gentle, admiring way which he had.
“Perhaps I have made a mistake,” he said, “but I was directed here. I was told that Anderson, who keeps the grocery, lives here.”
“I am Anderson,” replied Randolph, with dignity and a certain high scorn, and purposely leaving off the Mr. from his name.
Arthur Carroll no longer smiled, but his voice had a certain urbanity, although it rang imperiously. “Now, see here,” he said. “I want to know why you did not do as I left instructions at your shop?”
“To what do you refer?” inquired Anderson, quietly.
“I want to know why you did not send in your bill last Saturday night, as I ordered.” Carroll's voice was so loud that Mrs. Anderson, in the house, heard him distinctly through the open windows.
“I did not know that you had so ordered,” replied Anderson, still quietly, with a slight emphasis on the ordered. He looked slightly amused.
“Well, I did. I told your clerk to be sure to send in my bills promptly every Saturday morning. I wish to settle weekly.”
“The mistake was doubtless due to the fact that my clerk has been at home ill for the last three days,” said Anderson. “This is the first time I have heard of your order.”
“Well,” said Carroll, “send it in at once now, and don't let it happen again.”
Although the tone was harsh and the words were imperious, still they were not insolent. There was even an effect of camaraderie about them. At the last he flashed a quick smile at Anderson, which Anderson returned. He was dimly conscious all the time of Charlotte's very pretty face past her father's, peeping around his gray shoulder with a large-eyed, rather puzzled expression. Carroll nodded slightly after the smile, and told the coachman to go on, and the horses sprang forward after a delicate toss of their curving forelegs.
Randolph re-entered the house, and his mother, who was waiting, faced him with soft indignation.
“I must say, my son, that I am surprised that you submit to being addressed in such a fashion as that,” she said, her blue eyes darkening at him.
Randolph laughed again. “There was no real insolence about it, after all, mother,” he replied.
“It sounded so,” said she.
“That was because you could not see his face,” said Randolph. “He looked very amiable.”
“He was angry because he did not get his bill Saturday?” said Mrs. Anderson, interrogatively.
“Yes. He must have given the order to Sam Riggs the day before he went home ill, I suppose.”
“He must be a very wealthy man,” said Mrs. Anderson. “It is rather good of him to be so anxious to pay his bill every week.”
“Yes, it is a very laudable desire,” said Randolph. “I only hope his ability may equal it.”
His mother looked at him with quick surprise. “Why, you surely don't think—” she said.
“I think nothing. The man is all right, so far as I know. He seems a gentleman, and if he is well off he is a very desirable acquisition to Banbridge.”
“Who was that with him in the coach?” asked Mrs. Anderson.
“One of his daughters, I should judge. I hear he has two.”
“Pretty?”
“Well, I hardly know. Have you had any callers?”
“Yes. I suppose you met them. They made a very long call.”
“You mean the Egglestons?”
“Yes, Miss Josie and little Agnes Eggleston and Mrs. Monroe. They stayed here over an hour. I thought you would meet them.”
“Yes, I met them just as I turned from Main Street,” replied Randolph, soberly, but he was inwardly amused. He understood his mother. But there was something which he did not tell her concerning his experience with the new-comers, the Carrolls. Shortly, she went out to give some directions about tea, and Randolph, sitting beside a window in the parlor with an evening paper, drew from his pocket a letter just received in the mail, and examined it again. It was from a city bank, and it contained a repudiated check for ten dollars, made out by Captain Arthur Carroll, and which Anderson had cashed a few days previous at the request of the pretty young girl in the carriage, who to-night had sat there looking at him and did not speak, either because she had forgotten his face as he did her the little favor, or because he was so far away from her social scale that she was innocently unaware of any necessity for it.
Chapter V
Randolph Anderson had a large contempt for money used otherwise than for its material ends. A dollar never meant anything to him except its equivalent in the filling of a need. Generosity and the impulse of giving were in his blood, yet it had gone hard several times with people who had tried to overreach him even to a trifling extent. But now he submitted without a word to losing ten dollars through cashing Arthur Carroll's worthless check. He himself was rather bewildered at