"I sure did accommodate the young lady with the option, as
aforesaid," he vouchsafed. "And what's more, I telephoned to the
Grenoble Bank to see if her check for five thousand dollars was O.
K.... Well; so long, boys!"
He stepped ponderously down from the piazza and turned his broad back
on the row of excited faces.
"Hold on, Jedge!" the middle-aged man called after him. "Was her
check any good? You didn't tell us!"
The Judge did not reply. He merely waved his hand.
"He's going over to the post office," surmised the lean youth,
shifting the stub of his cigar to the corner of his mouth in a
knowing manner.
He lowered his heels to the floor with a thud and prepared to follow.
Five minutes later the bartender, not hearing the familiar hum of
voices from the piazza, thrust his head out of the door.
"Say!" he called out to the hatchet-faced woman who was writing down
sundry items in a ledger at a high desk. "The boys has all cleared
out. What's up, I wonder?"
"They'll be back," said the woman imperturbably, "an' more with 'em.
You want t' git your glasses all washed up, Gus; an' you may as well
fetch up another demijohn out the cellar."
Was it foreknowledge, or merely coincidence which at this same hour
led Mrs. Solomon Black, frugally inspecting her supplies for tomorrow
morning's breakfast, to discover that her baking-powder can was
empty?
"I'll have to roll out a few biscuits for their breakfast," she
decided, "or else I'll run short of bread for dinner.
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