Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

“He has four thousand more we can have.”
Frontispiece—Page [77].

The Merivale Banks

BY

MARY J. HOLMES

G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Copyright, 1900, 1903.

By MRS. MARY J. HOLMES.

[All rights reserved.]

The Merivale Banks.      Issued September, 1903.

CONTENTS

The Merivale Banks

CHAPTER I
THE BANKS

There were two of them: the First National, familiarly known as the White Bank, and a private bank, known as the Grey Bank, and they stood side by side in the same imposing block, with marble front and massive doors of oak, and broad granite steps. High up in the cornice was an inscription telling that the building had been erected in 1875 by Robert White, Esq. He would like to have had Judge Robert White, instead of Robert White, Esq., so proud was he of the title held for a year only, and for which he was indebted to the resignation of an intimate friend and the influence of money. But his wife dissuaded him from it, but could not keep off the “Esq.” He was both a judge and a ‘squire, he said, having held the office of Justice of the Peace for two terms, and being called ‘squire before he became a judge, and one of the titles should go down to posterity.

He was a weak man, and a proud man; weak in judgment and common sense, and very proud of his birth as son of a General and grandson of a Governor, with a line of ancestry dating back nearly to the flood. He was proud, too, of his money, and his house, the finest in Merivale, and his handsome grounds, and of his marble block, the third floor of which was occupied by a Masonic lodge, the second by law offices and club-rooms, and the first by the two banks. Of one of them—the National—he was president, and that fact added to his high opinion of himself as the first man in Merivale.

“Yes, my boy—the first man in Merivale, and don’t you forget it, or that you are my son—the grandson of a General and the great grandson of a Governor, with all sorts of high blood behind them,” he said to his only son and heir, Herbert. “Pick the best there is in society or none,” was his injunction, and by the best he meant those with the most money, without reference to character or morals.

In some respects Herbert was a son worthy of his father, and when a lad, had built a wall of reserve between himself and the boys whom he thought second-class in the Merivale High School.

With the girls, however, it was different, and when Louie Grey’s bright brown eyes looked fearlessly at him, and when Louie called him a blockhead because he failed to work out a simple problem in algebra upon the blackboard, and then, to make amends, whispered to him the answer to a question in history over which he was hopelessly floundering, he forgot the White blood of which his father had taught him to be so proud—forgot his pedigree, and went over the wall to meet the young girl with the brown eyes and hair, who had no pedigree, so far as he knew, and who certainly had no money.

The Greys were new-comers in Merivale, and no one knew anything about them, except that they had come from Denver and seemed to be very poor. But both Mr. Grey and his wife were so affable and had about them an air of so much good breeding and refinement that it won them friends at once, and a place in the best society of the town—always excepting, of course, Judge White, who held aloof from strangers until he knew the length of their purse, or their pedigree, both of which he considered indispensable if he were to take them up. The Greys had neither, he was sure, for they rented one of his cheap cottages in what was known as White Row; and Louie, when questioned by Herbert as to her pedigree, said at first that she didn’t think they had one; or if they had, they didn’t call it by that name; and when he explained to her what he meant, citing his grandfather and great-grandfather as examples of his meaning, she answered at once:

“Oh, yes, I have, or did have, a grandfather and great-grandfather, like you—captains of ships, which sailed from Nantucket out upon the seas, and were called either smugglers or pirates, I don’t know which. I’ll ask father.”

She did ask him, and, with his fondness for humor and jokes, Mr. Grey replied, “Tell him both, by all means, and that you have quite as blooded a pedigree as he can boast.”

How much of this Herbert believed, it were difficult to tell. Smugglers and pirates had an ugly sound, and for a time he kept aloof from the girl whose ancestry was so questionable; then her sunny face and saucy eyes prevailed over prejudice, and they became inseparable. She was no end of fun, he said, and followed fearlessly where he led her. She was not afraid of snakes, nor bugs, nor beetles, nor worms, for he had tried them all upon her, and she had neither screeched nor flinched, but paid him in his own coin, and made him more afraid of her than she was of him. She could climb a fence or a tree as fast as he could, and faster, too, as he knew by experience; for once, when he started up an elm in which there was a robin’s nest, with four blue eggs in it, she went after him like a little cat, and, seizing him by the coat collar, nearly threw him to the ground and made him give up the nest, to which the father and mother robins, who had been uttering cries of distress, returned in peace, finding their eggs unmolested.

“I’ll never speak to you again,” she said to him when she had him safe on the ground, with her hand still holding to his collar, while he made frantic efforts to get away from her.

She didn’t speak to him for two days; but when, on the third, she found an orange in her desk, with a few words scrawled on a piece of paper, “Haven’t you been mean long enough, and ain’t you never going to give in?” she gave in, and allowed him to walk home with her after school, past his own handsome house, with its grounds sloping down to the river, and on to the narrow back street where she lived in one of his father’s tenement houses. It was not a very attractive house, and Herbert always shuddered when he saw it and thought that Louie lived there. There were six cottages in a row, all of the same size and architecture, except one at the north end, where the only shade tree on the street was growing. This was a little larger and had in front a double bay window, which gave it an air of superiority over its humbler neighbors. When Mr. Grey came to Merivale houses were scarce and rents high. In White Row, Bay Cottage, as it was called on account of its window, chanced to be vacant, and after searching in vain for a house in a more desirable neighborhood, Mr. Grey took it and became one of the White Row tenants.

“My tenants,” Judge White was wont to say, with a strong emphasis on the my, as if they belonged to him, body and soul, while to the tenants, when he came in contact with them, he had an air as if they were as far beneath him in the social scale as it was possible for them to be. “A wretched lot,” he said, “who never seem to think it as incumbent upon them to pay their rent as their grocer’s bill; act as if I or’to give it to ’em. In fact, old Nancy Sharp once told me I or’to, because I was rich and she poor.”

To this, however, Mr. Grey was an exception. His rent was always ready, and he paid it with a manner which made his landlord feel that if there were any superiority, it was not on his side.

On the afternoon when Herbert accompanied Louie home, carrying her books and her umbrella, for the day had been showery, he found his father in the cottage, receiving his money for the quarter’s rent, and looking puzzled and disconcerted.

“I’ll think about it, and let you know; but I warn you now that I don’t believe it will work. It takes experience and a pile of money. No, sir; I don’t believe it will work,” he said, as he placed his rent in a pocketbook bulging with bills, for this was the day when he went the rounds among his tenants himself, instead of sending an agent.

What wouldn’t work, he didn’t explain to Herbert, whom he took away with him, questioning him closely as to the frequency of his visits to the Greys, and telling him to remember who he was and what his ancestry.

At dinner that night he was more communicative, and said to his wife, “What do you suppose Tom Grey wants to do?”

Mrs. White could not guess, and her husband continued: “In the first place, he has given notice that he will quit my tenement for a larger house at the end of the next quarter; and I don’t like it. No, sir! I don’t like it. I never fancied the fellow. Puts on the fine gentleman too much for a chap as poor as I suppose he is. But he’s a good tenant—one of the very best; pays up to the hour, and never asks for repairs, papering nor nothing; while the rest of ’em in White Row hound me, spring and fall, for paper or paint, but mostly paper, which I believe they tear off as fast as it is put on. Old Nancy Sharp had the impudence to ask me for screens to keep the flies out! Lord Harry! they’ll want gas or electric lights next! But what beats me is Tom Grey’s setting up so high. Says he has lately come into possession of quite a little money. He has been West for some weeks, and has just got home, and is going to take a better house, and wants to rent the vacant rooms next to the Bank; and for what, do you suppose? You’d never guess.”

Mrs. White didn’t try, and he went on: “For a bank! A private bank! To be known as Grey’s Bank! Think of it—a one-horse bank, side by side with mine! It’s a piece of impertinence, and I would have refused outright, if the place had not been vacant so long, and I hadn’t had such pesky work with the last man, who went off leaving me in the lurch to the tune of three hundred dollars.”

Here the judge stopped to take breath, while his wife asked, “Where did he get the money to start a bank with?”

“The Lord only knows,” her husband replied. “Was poor as Job’s turkey when he came here. Why, didn’t his wife do some sewing for you?”

Mrs. White nodded, and the judge went on: “And now he has money for a bank! Gambled for it, maybe, when he was gone. He is just the quiet, sly sort of a fellow to do that thing.”

“Mr. Grey never gambled, I know he didn’t,” Herbert spoke up. “He’s a gentleman, if he is poor, and he has been through college. Louie told me so, and you have only been to common schools!”

Herbert was quite eloquent in his defense of Mr. Grey, but his father frowned him down by saying, “You seem to be posted in Mr. Grey’s affairs—too much so—and I want you to keep away from there—carrying home that girl’s books and umbrella! Remember who you are.”

Herbert’s answer was to leave the room and slam the door behind him, while his father continued: “That boy is too thick with the Grey girl, and if her father gets into a bank, it will be worse yet. I think I’ll not let him have it.”

“But,” his wife rejoined, “if you do not rent to him some one else will, and your rooms will stay vacant. Don’t be foolish. It isn’t likely he can run more than a year.”

“No, nor half that, before he bursts up. Who is going to deposit with him, when there is the First National? Nobody; but I’ll have the lease drawn for a year, and he’ll have to pay whether or no, half down anyway! Said he had had some experience in a bank, and liked it. Well, let him try. I’ll give him six months before he closes up.”

As a result of this conversation, the rooms next to the National Bank were leased for a year to Mr. Grey, who also hired and moved into a more fashionable part of the town than White’s Row, where he had at first lived. There was some speculation as to where he got the money so suddenly for so great an expenditure when he was not in any business. But on this point he was non-committal, as he was on most subjects. He never talked much, but his pleasant, genial manners had made him popular, and people were glad to see him prosper, and glad to have a second bank in town. They needed it, they said, for Bob White was getting so bigheaded and overbearing, that it was well to take him down a bit, and they hoped Tom Grey would succeed.

He had no fear of it himself, and entered heart and soul into the fitting up of the new bank, and never asked patronage from any one. He knew he should get it, and he did. Slowly at first, as people were a little timid, and those who had money in the National did not care to draw it out and place it elsewhere. As time went on, however, and there was no sign of the blow-up Judge White had predicted, confidence increased. There were more deposits and larger, and by the end of the year the Grey Bank was doing a good business—small, of course, compared with the White Bank, but good, and constantly increasing.

“Can’t go on long. Mark my words. Can’t go on,” Judge White would say, shaking his head warningly to some customer who, he knew, was taking a part of his funds from his bank to place it with his rival. “There goes Widow Brown now with five dollars, I dare say, and old maid Smith with ten, maybe. What is that to what we have? A drop in the bucket. You’ll see, you will, where he’ll land with his washerwomen’s and servant girls’ deposits.”

This was Judge White’s opinion of the Grey Bank, and when the first lease expired, he would have liked some good reason for refusing to renew it. But there was none. The rent was paid as regularly as it had been in the little tenement in White’s Row. There was no other applicant for the premises, and he contented himself with raising the rent a hundred dollars, to which Mr. Grey made no demur. He was satisfied and happy, and an ideal banker, greeting every one with a pleasant smile and word, and making loans in small amounts where the risk was so great that the White Bank would never have taken it. To all human appearance he was on the top wave of prosperity and enjoyed it to the full.

He was building a new house now, on a lot a little out of the town, and on the same street with Judge White. It was to be first-class in every respect, and people watched it as it progressed, and were glad for Tom Grey. He was a good fellow every way, and a good citizen, giving freely of his means and working for the public good, and they rejoiced in his good fortune, and made him one of the Village Board and School Board, and would have made him a vestryman if he had not declined that office, saying he was not worthy of it. That Judge White should be a little jealous of him was natural, but he was too proud to own it, and only shook his head ominously whenever he was mentioned.

“Let him run,” he would say to himself. “Yes, let him run. He will soon reach the end of his rope, if my surmises are correct. Then we’ll hear howling from those washerwomen who are putting their weeks’ earnings in his bank. Yes, let him run!”

CHAPTER II
HERBERT AND LOUIE

Four years passed, and the Grey Bank had not come to the end of its rope. Many besides Widow Brown and old maid Smith, and washerwomen generally, deposited in it, and Mr. Grey seemed to be increasing in wealth and prosperity.

The new house had long been finished and occupied, and was a model of simple elegance, outside and in. The Greys had good taste, and whatever they touched fell into the right place, and harmonized with whatever was nearest to it. Louie’s artistic eye detected an incongruity at once, and as she directed the most of her surroundings, people said of the grounds and the house that they were like pictures in which the outline and coloring were perfect, while Louie was the fairest picture of all.

She was nearly seventeen, with a face of rare beauty, especially her eyes, which Herbert White thought the handsomest he had ever seen. She did not climb fences or trees with him now. She was getting too old for that, but she went rowing with him on the river, after the white lilies, and took long rambles in the woods, searching for the early spring flowers, and later on for ferns and the red sumach berries. Sometimes she drove with him in the fancy turn-out which his father had given him on his birthday. But this did not occur often, for such drives were highly disapproved by Judge White, who read his son many a lecture on his bad taste in admiring a girl in Louie’s low estate.

“Good thunder, father,” Herbert said to him one morning when the lecture had been longer than usual, “isn’t Louie Grey as good as I am, if her father hasn’t quite as much money as you? He is a banker and a gentleman, and folks like him, and put him in office. Why, he is President of the village now, and—and—I never told you—but that time Mr. Smith, our church warden, died and we had to have a new one, they offered it to Mr. Grey, who refused it, just as he refused being vestryman, saying he was not good enough. So they took you, because you had a lot of money, I know; I heard about it. They said you were proud and overbearing, but on the whole a good man, and if Mr. Grey wouldn’t take it, there was no one else, so they elected you. I wanted to tell you then, but you seemed so pleased I didn’t.”

The judge was very pale by the time Herbert finished this statement, and for a church warden very angry, too. He didn’t swear, but he wanted to, and did say some things not very complimentary to the church generally and Mr. Grey in particular. He was proud of being church warden, and that Tom Grey should have been mentioned in preference to himself was galling to his pride, and increased his dislike for the man and everything pertaining to him, while Herbert was again told in strong terms to let the Grey girl alone.

“Nobody knows what her father was before he came here, or how he lived either. No business till he opened a bank, I’ve heard it hinted—but I ain’t going to slander anybody; this I’ll say, though, I don’t believe Tom Grey’s record is the cleanest that ever was. Needn’t tell me that one-horse bank of his can pay for the big swath he is cutting. Stands to reason he has some other way of getting money, and always has had. Time will tell. Warden of the church! I’d laugh. He had sense enough to decline, and I’ll resign, too, by the Lord Harry! Took me because I had money and there was nobody else! Yes, sir! I’ll resign, and let ’em have Tom Grey if they want him.”

The judge was very red in the face by the time he had finished this tirade, to which Herbert had listened impatiently. He had seen a plaid skirt and red waist down the street, and was anxious to get away; but his father was not yet through, and, after mopping his face and taking breath, he went on:

“The girl is all right in her place, but my son should look higher, and remember the kind of family he belongs to. Do you think your cousin, Fred Lansing, would go scampering round the country with Tom Grey’s girl? No, sir! There’s a young man who knows how to demean himself, and it would be well for you to imitate him. He is coming here, too. I’ve just got a letter from his mother, my sister and your aunt, Mrs. George Lansing. They will visit us this summer and bring that young lady who lives with them. There’s a chance for you. What is her name? Blanche—Blanche—?”

“Blanche Percy—old enough to be my grandmother,” Herbert answered contemptuously, as he turned on his heel and walked away, declaring he didn’t care for a hundred Blanche Percys and Fred Lansings. “I have had him dinged into my ears as a model to imitate ever since I can remember,” he said to himself as he went rapidly down the street in the direction of the plaid dress and red jacket.

And yet in his heart he had a great admiration for his cousin Fred, who was six years his senior, and every way his equal in money and position and pedigree, if indeed he was not his superior. His mother was a White, with all the prestige of the White lineage, while on the Lansing side was a long line of judges and governors and bishops, and two generals, both in the Confederate army. One of them was Fred’s father, who was a Virginian, and had been killed at Gettysburg. Judge White was very proud of his connection with the Lansings and very proud of his nephew Fred, who had been to college, and travelled round the world, and carried himself as if he had in his veins the blood of a hundred kings. He had not been often in Merivale, and it was two or three years since Herbert last saw him, in Washington, where his mother had lived for some time, and where her house was a resort for the best society in that cosmopolitan city. But he was coming now, and Herbert felt a thrill of pride as he thought of showing off his distinguished relatives to the plain people of Merivale.

“I wonder what he will think of Louie, and what she will think of him, and what father meant about Mr. Grey’s record,” he said to himself, as he turned a corner and met the girl face to face.

“Hallo,” he said, and she replied, “Hallo,” as if they were talking through a telephone; and then, unmindful of his father’s orders that he should let the Grey girl alone, Herbert continued: “Come on down to the river. I have a lot to tell you.”

It did not take them long to reach the river, and the boat which Herbert had named for Louie was soon floating out upon the water, with the two young people in it.

“Well, what is the lot you have to tell me?” Louie asked, removing her hat with one hand, and letting the other hang over the side of the boat in the river.

Once or twice Herbert had heard insinuations from his father and a few others with regard to Mr. Grey’s career before he came to Merivale, and of the possible way in which he was running his bank and having so much money to spend, and had always been very angry.

“I’ll ask Louie some time,” he had thought, but had never brought himself to do it until now, when his father’s hints were fresh in his mind. It was rather an awkward thing to do, and he hesitated a moment before he began:

“What did your father do before he came to Merivale?”

It was a strange question, and Louie looked her surprise as she replied, “Do you mean, how did he get his living?”

“Why, yes, I guess that is what I mean. Was he a banker, or merchant, or what?”

Louie’s brown eyes looked steadily at him, and her face flushed as she replied very frankly:

“I hardly know what he did; there were so many things, and he did not stay long in any. Got tired and tried another. He was in a bank for a while, and in a store and insurance office, and I don’t know what else; a rolling stone, mother used to call him, but he managed at times to make a lot of money, which he spent very freely, and then didn’t have much till he made some more. He is doing a great deal better now. Why do you ask me? Have you any particular reason?”

Louie’s eyes were very bright, and Herbert felt his own droop beneath them. He had not realized all his question might lead to, and was wondering how to answer her, when she again said to him:

“What is it? Tell me!”

“Oh, nothing much,” he began. “There are a heap of liars in the world—jealous pates—who hint that your father is—a—or was—a—”

Here he came to a dead stop, for Louie’s eyes were getting dangerous.

“Is—er—was—er—what? Speak out, or I’ll get up and go straight home.”

“I’d like to see you do it,” Herbert answered laughingly. “Don’t bounce about so. You’ll upset the boat, and I can’t swim.”

“I can,” she said, contemptuously; “and what is it? What do the liars say of father? That he is a thief, or murderer, or gambler, or what?”

“Why, no—or, yes—er—you’ve hit it partly,” Herbert stammered, but got no farther, for Louie sprang to her feet with a movement as if she were going to jump overboard, and did nearly upset the boat.

“Sit down, Louie. Sit down. Don’t be so peppery, and I’ll tell you. Some folks do say that he gambled before he came here, and speculates now.”

“It’s false!” Louie exclaimed. “It’s false!” and she struck her hand in the river with such force that great splashes of water were thrown into the boat.

“Of course it’s a lie, I know that,” Herbert said, trying to quiet her. “I don’t know why I told you, only I wanted to contradict it.”

“You may. You can. He never gambled, and as to speculating, lots do that all the time in New York and Chicago and everywhere. You would do it if you could make money by it. But I don’t believe father does. I know he never gambled; that’s different,” Louie answered vehemently; then, suddenly, as if some wave of memory had swept over her, there came a hard look into her eyes, and drops of sweat stood around her lips, which were very white, as was the rest of her face.

Herbert thought she was going to cry, but she only said very low:

“Let’s go home.”

“No, no—not yet. It is so nice out here,” Herbert replied. “There is more I want to tell you.”

“If it is about father, I do not wish to hear it,” Louie said.

“It isn’t,” Herbert replied. “It is about my cousin, Fred Lansing. You have heard of him?”

Louie had heard of him, as a relation of whom Herbert was very proud, but in her excitement she cared to hear nothing more. She wanted to go home, she said; but Herbert pulled farther up the river toward a bed of white lilies, and kept talking to her of Fred and his Aunt Esther, who were coming, with a Miss Blanche Percy, to whom his Uncle Lansing had been guardian, and who lived with his aunt. This Miss Percy, he said, was born in Richmond, where his aunt lived before the war. She once had a twin brother, he had heard, who killed himself, or was killed, or something. They never talked about it. She was a great heiress, and his father would like him to marry her.

At this point Louie began to show a little interest, and looked up quickly, while he continued:

“But that’s absurd. She is as old as Fred, if not older. Boys don’t marry their grandmothers, do they?”

“I should think not,” Louie replied, and her head went up a little more squarely on her shoulders. “When are these fine folks coming?” she asked.

“Before long, I guess, and then there’ll be some grand times in town, you bet. I heard mother say once that if the Lansings ever came here she’d give a party which would astonish the natives. She’d have a brass band and a string band and a caterer and everything O. K., and have people from Worcester and Springfield, and only the very first in town.”

“Then I shall not be invited,” Louie said, with a snap in her voice corresponding to the snap in her eyes.

“Why not?” Herbert asked in surprise.

“Because you would not invite the daughter of a gambler to meet your fine friends, and that is what you said my father was,” Louie answered.

“I said nothing of the sort,” Herbert responded hotly. “I told of some hints I wanted to contradict. I am sorry I told you, and I know it isn’t true.”

To this Louie made no reply, but there came into her eyes a second time the same hard look which had been there once before as she talked of her father. Ordinarily she would have been greatly interested in the party, of which there were never many in Merivale, but she was too anxious to get home and confront her father with what she had heard, to care much for Fred Lansing, or Blanche Percy, or the party to which she probably would not be bidden.

Herbert was now rowing back to the boathouse, and almost before the landing was reached Louie sprang on shore, and, without a word, sped away like a deer in the direction of her home.

Her mother was out, but she found her father in the little room he called his den, where he spent a good deal of his leisure time smoking and reading, and looking over papers and letters, of which he had a great many.

Louie never hesitated when a thing was to be done, and, rushing in upon him, she startled him with the question:

“Father, are you a gambler?”

If she had knocked him down, Mr. Grey could not have been more surprised.

“A gambler!” he repeated, the pen with which he was writing dropping from his hands and his face white as a corpse. “What do you mean? Who has said this of me?”

“It does not matter. I have heard that it was hinted. I said it was a lie, and it is. You are not a gambler. If I thought you were and that the money you give us so freely was obtained that way, I’d—I’d—burn my dresses! I’d smash the furniture! I believe I’d set fire to the house!”

She looked like a little fury, with her flashing eyes and flushed, eager face, and Mr. Grey drew his chair back from her as if afraid she might do him bodily harm.

Two or three times he tried to speak, but the words he wanted to say were difficult to utter and his lips twitched nervously.

“Say, father,” she continued, “are you a gambler?”

He was glad she put the question that way, and answered her clearly and distinctly:

“No, daughter, I am not.”

“I knew it, and I’m so glad,” and Louie’s arms were around his neck, and she was smothering him with kisses, each of which seemed to burn the spot it touched, as he tried to disengage himself from her, and asked her to tell him what she had heard.

She told him all at last, and although it was not much, it was the first breath of suspicion which had reached him in his prosperous career, and it struck him harder than Louie ever dreamed.

“Don’t tell your mother,” he said. “It is not necessary to trouble her.”

“Of course not,” Louie answered, “but what are you going to do? Won’t you arrest ’em? Sue ’em for slander, or something?”

Mr. Grey laughed and answered: “Sue whom? That boy, or his father, from whom, I think, the whole story started, because he is jealous of my success? No, Louie, that is not my nature, and it is the wiser plan to pay no attention to a story which will die of itself if it is given nothing to feed upon. I am not a gambler. Perhaps I speculate a little now and then in a safe, legitimate way, but that is very common. And now go.”

He was quite himself again, and, with a load lifted from her mind, Louie went out to meet her mother, who had just come in.

She did not see Herbert again, to speak with him, that day or the next, although he passed the house two or three times very slowly, and she knew he was hoping to get a sight of her. The next day a new wheel came to her, and, anxious to show it and try it, she started out for a spin, going past the White house, at which she looked almost as anxiously as Herbert had looked for her the day before, and with better success, for she had scarcely turned from that street into the Boulevard when she heard the whir of a wheel behind her, and Herbert came scorching to her side, nearly running her down in his headlong haste.

“I say, Louie,” he began, “where have you kept yourself? It’s an age since I saw you. I hope you are not mad at what I told you. I wish my tongue had been cut out before I did it; and isn’t your wheel a dandy? Don’t ride so fast. I want to see it. Are you mad?”

“No,” Louie answered curtly, stopping short. “I told father what you said, and it isn’t true, and if you ever hint it again, I’ll have you arrested, and your father, too. I know he is at the bottom of it, because he is jealous of father, and I’ll never speak to you again if you don’t contradict it every time you hear it. My father a gambler! Not much!”

She had said what she had to say, and was ready to forgive and be forgiven, and to talk of her wheel, which, she said, had cost seventy-five or a hundred dollars, she didn’t know which.

“It was not bought with gambling money, either,” she continued with a toss of her head. “Father gave a check on his bank.”

Herbert thought of some things he had heard with regard to the management of the bank, but wisely forebore any comment. He was too glad to have Louie back on any terms, and the two were soon bowling far out into the country, Louie keeping a little in advance, but near enough to Herbert to hear what he was telling her of the Lansings, who, he said, were coming the next day on the two o’clock train from New York. The party was a sure thing, for his father and mother had settled it that morning at breakfast. They decided, too, that no one in Merivale should be invited except those to whom his mother was indebted and those who called upon Mrs. Lansing and Miss Percy. “So you be sure and call with your mother,” he added.

Louie laughed, and said she shouldn’t trouble herself to call upon such old people, nor would they expect it, but she would tell her mother. Then she made a long, rapid sweep, and turned towards home, followed by Herbert, who with all his scorching could scarcely keep up with her, for she seemed to fly, and her wheel was proving worthy of its name, “The Flyer,” stamped upon it in silver letters, with the date of its gift to her.

“I don’t suppose I shall see you while your grand folks are here,” she said as she dismounted at her gate.

“Oh, but you must see Fred,” Herbert replied, and the last thing she heard from him as he went down the road was something about Fred, the best fellow in the world.

The next day, when Louie heard the New York train, she took a book, and seating herself upon the piazza, waited for the White carriage. She had seen it go by with Herbert in it, and in the course of half an hour it came back, with Herbert and a young man on the front seat, and two ladies behind them, presumably Mrs. Lansing and Blanche Percy. The former was short and fat and sat very erect, looking curiously about her through a gold-handled lorgnette.

“Dumpy and Frumpy and Proud,” was Louie’s mental verdict of her; then she scanned the lady beside her, who was tall and slender and fair, and dressed in mourning, with a look of care or fatigue, or both, on her face, which was very pale and very sweet: “Rather pretty, with an air about her,” Louie thought, and turned next to the young man, Fred Lansing, who was sitting on the side of the open carriage nearest to her.

As he was looking another way, she could not see his face until, from something Herbert said to him, he turned quickly and she saw a pale, refined face, with perfectly regular features and a pair of large, dark eyes, which met hers, while his hat was lifted for a moment, as she bowed to Herbert, who had removed his cap and was waving it towards her.

“I believe he is a gentleman, but proud, of course. I wonder if Herbert will tell him what people say of my father,” she thought, and grew hot and dizzy as she recalled the insult.

“The Lansings are here,” she said to her father when he came home to lunch.

“The Lansings? Who are they?” he answered abstractedly.

“Why, the grand relations of Judge White,” Louie replied; “his sister, Mrs. Lansing, and her son Fred. They live in Washington now, but they did live in Richmond before the war, and there’s a Miss Blanche Percy with them, a great heiress and Mr. Lansing’s ward before he died. She had a brother who was killed, or something, and I guess that is why her face is so sad. I saw her just a minute as she went by,” Louie added, too intent upon her strawberries and cream to notice the change in her father as she talked, from one of indifference to absorbing interest.

The Lansings made no impression upon him, but when Blanche Percy was mentioned, he became all attention, and had Louie been observing him, she would have seen a pallor about his lips as he listened.

“Blanche Percy—from where?” he asked, and Louie replied, “From Washington now—from Richmond formerly, where I told you the Lansings lived. They are Southerners, and big swells, Herbert says.”

To this her father made no comment, but asked, “What was it about the brother? What did you say his name was?”

“I didn’t say. I don’t know—Percy, most likely,” Louie replied. “Herbert told me she had a twin brother who killed himself, or was killed—the latter probably; those Southerners are so hot-headed.”

As Mr. Grey made no reply, Louie branched off upon the big party the Whites were to have in honor of their guests, and to which no one was to be invited from the town except those to whom Mrs. White was indebted, and those who called upon Mrs. Lansing and Miss Percy.

“You’ll call, mother, won’t you? I want you and father to attend the party, and tell me about it,” she said.

There was a sudden movement as of dissent from Mr. Grey, but before he could speak his wife replied:

“I don’t think I shall trouble myself. I was here five years before Mrs. White called upon me, and then she came when I am certain she knew I was out. When I returned it, she was engaged, and she has never been near me since. I shall not call on her or the Lansings.”

“Of course not,” Mr. Grey rejoined, with an asperity of manner unusual with him.

He did not seem himself at all. He had a headache, he said, and, declining the strawberries Louie urged upon him, left the table and went to his room, where his wife found him lying upon the couch, either asleep or pretending to be, for he neither spoke nor moved when she entered the room. He was subject to headaches, and they had increased in frequency within the last few years. This one seemed harder than usual, and it was not till the next day that he went to the bank, before which the White carriage was standing, with two ladies in it, Mrs. Lansing and Blanche Percy, while Judge White was just coming down the steps to join them.

Mr. Grey would rather have passed them unnoticed, but he never forgot to be a gentleman, and in response to the judge’s rather gruff “good morning, Grey,” he answered pleasantly and lifted his hat politely to the two ladies.

“Who is that splendid-looking man?” Blanche asked as the judge entered the carriage.

“That? Oh, that’s Tom Grey, the one-horse banker who has set up business right under my nose; but he can’t run long, you’ll see,” the judge replied, as they drove away, while the one-horse banker looked after them till they were out of sight, with thoughts from which Louie would have shrunk aghast if she could have known them.

CHAPTER III
INVITATIONS FOR THE PARTY

Merivale was one of those quiet New England towns where, compared with larger places, the people seemed more asleep than awake, there was so little to interest or excite them outside the routine of daily life. There were no very poor people, for work of some sort was plenty, and there were no very rich people, except Judge White, whose walk, as he put down his heavy gold-headed cane, indicated money and the self-importance he felt on account of it. There were four churches—Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist and Roman Catholic—two banks, a weekly paper, a high school, a book club, a struggling literary society, three dry goods stores, six groceries, and ten saloons, which the W. C. T. U.’s were vainly trying to suppress. Once in two weeks the Presbyterians and Methodists had a sewing society, which few attended, as it closed at five and every one went home to supper. Once a month the Episcopalians had a meeting of the Guild, with supper and a large attendance, especially at supper time, when the young people came in, glad of any break in their rather monotonous lives. For a time Mrs. White was president of the Guild, but when at an annual meeting Mrs. Grey was made vice-president she resigned, giving as a reason that it made her nervous to read the prayers with which the meetings were opened. Mrs. Grey was elected to fill her place, and made a most popular president. Under her jurisdiction, with Louie as coadjutor, entertainments of various kinds were instituted, and the little town put on quite an air of hilarity compared with what it had worn.

The Grey house was the centre of many gatherings where hospitality was dispensed with a liberal hand, and all who chose to come were welcome. But there were few parties or receptions, and when it was rumored that Mrs. White was intending to give one, the town awoke to great activity of speculation as to who would be invited and who slighted. Somehow the news got abroad that only those who called upon the guests were to be honored, and at once the tide set in toward the White house, where there were more calls made and more cards left than had been left and made in a year. Mrs. White was very reserved in manner and had no intimate friends. She had her days when she was at home to those who chose to call. Sometimes three or four came, and sometimes none, and she was equally pleased either way, as she preferred the quiet of her own room to society, if she were expected to exert herself. On the two occasions when as president she had felt obliged to entertain the Guild, and Herbert, who was socially inclined, had invited everybody, she had been greatly bored and scandalized by the crowd which came, glad of a chance to see the inside of the grand house and say they had been there. She did not suppose there were so many common people in the Episcopal Church, she said. She thought they belonged somewhere else, and after she resigned her office as president of the Guild she withdrew from it and thus freed herself from the obligation to entertain it again. And still she liked the bustle and excitement of watering places and fashionable life—if she could be in it and not of it—could see it go on, and not feel obliged to talk to anyone unless she chose to do so.

People called her proud, and Herbert called her indolent, and she was both. Now, however, with the advent of the Lansings she roused up and opened all her treasures. They dined in the state dining-room. The best silver and glass and linen were brought out. The carriage and horses stood at the door at all hours. She went to Worcester and interviewed the best caterer and the best florist there, and then with Herbert sat down to address the invitations for the party which was to astonish the people in Merivale, and so far eclipse a little party which Mrs. Grey had given the previous winter that people who attended it would never know they had been there. To this gathering Mrs. White had not been bidden, as Mrs. Grey had confined her invitations to those to whom she was indebted, or who had been polite to her. Mrs. White would have scorned to acknowledge that she cared for being left out. “Why should I be invited?” she had said to Herbert, who was expressing his surprise and saying he knew there was a mistake, “Why should I be, when I scarcely know Mrs. Grey?”

“It is your fault and loss, too,” Herbert replied, while his father, who was present, chimed in, “Invited by the Greys, who used to live in White’s Row with Nancy Sharp! I’d laugh! They have come up like mushrooms, the Lord only knows how, but I can guess. I consider it a compliment not to be invited to their blow-out. Music from Springfield, with a caterer and flowers by the bushel! Must have cost him a pretty sum, decorator and all!”

“They did not have a decorator,” Herbert had said. “Louie did it herself. She has more taste than half the decorators in the country, and they say the party was elegant every way, and Mr. and Mrs. Grey were ideal host and hostess. I wish I had been there, but young folks like me were not in it.”

“Glad you wasn’t. I believe you are Grey mad, and everybody else, but I tell you I won’t have it! No, sir, I won’t have it!” The judge growled as he left the house.

This was in the winter, and not long after the Grey party, which had been much talked of as recherché in every respect. Notwithstanding what the judge and Mrs. White had said, their slight had secretly rankled and increased their prejudice against the Greys. And now that the White party was in progress, there was a chance not only to retaliate, but to outdo all the Greys had done.

“If we are to have a blow-out we’ll do it brown and beat the Greys. The idea! That one-horse banker riding over my head!” the judge said to his wife when discussing the matter with her. “If the Greys had their truck from Springfield, do you go to Boston or Worcester, and get the best there is to be had. Don’t stop at prices. Did the Grey’s have a brass band? No, only a string for dancing? Then we will have a brass—two if you like. Beat the Greys anyhow! That’s all I ask. Judge White is good for any amount. We haven’t had a party for years, and the Lansings don’t come every day.”

This was the judge’s attitude, with which his wife sympathized to a certain extent. She really had more good sense than her husband, but she was largely dominated by his opinion, and when she at last sat down with Herbert to direct the cards of invitation, two facts were prominent to her mind. Her party was to surpass that of the Greys, and the Greys were not to be invited. “We will take the townspeople first,” she said, and began to read the names upon her list, hesitating over some and crossing some out as not quite worthy to meet the Lansings.

Herbert had jotted down several names, which he submitted to his mother, and among them were those of two Sheldon girls in the country, who, he said, were good dancers and ought to be invited. Mrs. White shook her head. She did not know the Sheldons. She had already exceeded the limit set at first to her invitations, and had drawn the line on all country people except the Gibsons, whose son had called on Fred, with whom he had been in college. The Sheldons were thrown into the wastepaper basket, with others who had preceded them, and Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Grey were next suggested.

“Certainly not,” his mother said, more decidedly than she had to the Sheldons. “I scarcely know Mrs. Grey, and have never been in her house, nor has she been here, and your father has a strong dislike to Mr. Grey.”

“Better say ‘unreasonable prejudice.’ It’s nothing but that,” Herbert answered hotly. “Father has treated them like dogs, and people know it. Why, Mr. Grey is by far the finest-looking man in town, and Mrs. Grey is a lady, and Louie is a——”

Here he stopped, for Fred Lansing just then entered the room, and hearing the last words and seeing Herbert’s flushed face, said laughingly:

“Louie is a what? and who is Louie? Oh, I know; she is that pretty, bright-eyed girl I have seen two or three times riding her wheel like the wind. Is she to be one of the guests? I hope so.”

“Yes, she is,” Herbert answered emphatically, “and she has a wonderful voice. Maybe we can get a song from her. I am writing the names now—Mr. and Mrs. Grey. He is in the bank, you know, next to ours. You can help put the cards in the envelopes, if you want to do something.”

Herbert was in a hurry to get the Greys settled before any further demur from his mother. They should be invited anyway, and he wrote the addresses and passed the envelopes to his cousin, who put in the cards of invitation and dropped them into the basket with others ready to be delivered.

Mrs. White did not care for a controversy before Fred, and said nothing, thinking she would remove the envelopes before the basket went out. But she forgot it; and when, next morning, David went his rounds with the invitations, two were left at Mr. Grey’s.

“Oh, mamma! Look! Invitations for us all, and you have not called, either,” Louie cried, taking out one of the cards and reading that Mr. and Mrs. White would be at home Thursday evening, June —, from eight to twelve.

She was greatly excited, for she had thought a good deal of the party, of which so much was being said in town, but her mother’s decided “We shall decline” dampened her spirits at once. There was a storm of tears, under which Mrs. Grey might have given way but for her husband, who, when consulted, was more decided than his wife, and the regrets of the three were sent to the White house on the day preceding the party, bringing Herbert at once to the Greys with inquiries as to the reason why Louie, at least, could not come, even if her parents stayed away.

“I’ve told Fred so much about you,” he said, “and he wants to see you, and I was going to have mother get you to sing; Miss Percy is so fond of singing, and such a good judge; and now everything is going wrong. The head caterer cannot come, and will send some one in his place, and most likely the crew will be drunk and serve ice cream first, and leave the sandwiches in the pantry, as they did at Alice Rogers’; and now you are not to be there, and I wish we were not to have the blow-out, and I don’t care if it rains cats and dogs to-morrow. I hope it will.”

Having delivered this speech, which did not at all move either Mr. or Mrs. Grey, Herbert flung himself out of the house, with a feeling that he was a much-abused young man, and that without Louie the party would be a failure.

CHAPTER IV
THE MORNING OF THE PARTY

“Yes, I hope it will rain,” Herbert said to himself as he went tearing along the road towards home.

Just why he wished it to rain he did not know, except to spite somebody—his father, perhaps, who was so unreasonably bitter against the Greys, “the very nicest people in town, while Louie was certainly the prettiest girl, and would cast in the shade anyone, whether from Springfield or Worcester or Boston,” and he wanted Fred Lansing to see her. It was a decided shame that she was not coming. Yes, he hoped it would rain so hard nobody would come.

It did not rain, but there was a shower in the night, which laid the dust and made the morning fresher and more delightful.

“Just the time for a drive,” the judge said to his guests after breakfast was over. “We want to get away from this clatter, with things generally upside down and Susan so rattled she don’t know what she is about.”

A part of the waiters from Worcester had come to look over the premises and make suggestions, and they were already in the kitchen and butler’s pantry and rousing the ire of the cook and housemaids with their criticisms. A florist was there with his assistants, and the rooms were full of palms and flowers and potted plants. Crash was being laid down for the dancing on a very broad and long piazza, which was screened from public view by wide awnings, which could be rolled up if the night proved hot, as it bade fair to do. At one end of the piazza the orchestra was to sit, and the piano had to be moved into its place, with chairs and rugs and divans for the lookers-on.

In the grounds preparations were making for the band which was to play between the dances. Chinese lanterns were being suspended in fanciful lines from the trees and from the house to the entrance of the grounds, and everywhere were the hurry and bustle attending preparations for a large entertainment, both outdoors and in. Not accustomed to giving companies, Mrs. White was threatened with a nervous headache, and was in a state of wild excitement, giving the most contradictory orders and bewildering her assistants generally. Taken as a whole, the house was topsy-turvy, with sixteen people at work, and none of them seemingly level-headed except Fred Lansing, who, if allowed to do it, would have brought order out of confusion, so quiet and systematic were all his plans and movements. But the judge insisted upon taking him for a drive, saying they would go to the bank first, as he wanted to see his cashier, who had sent him a note early that morning, telling him that Godfrey Sheldon, a farmer, who lived in the country and was his heaviest depositor, had told him the night before that he was coming the next day to draw out his five thousand dollars.

“Of course, we can stand a great deal more than that,” the cashier wrote, “but wouldn’t it be safe to ask Sheldon to leave a part for a day or two, until we receive that loan due to-morrow?”

“No, sir!” the judge said, as he read the note. “I’ll never ask any man to wait for a dollar. My bank asking time! I’d laugh. Let Sheldon have his money. He is an old curmudgeon, anyway, and has to be handled with gloves. I wonder if he was invited to our party. It is like him to take a miff if he isn’t; he feels himself of so much importance because he was sent to the Legislature one winter and had Hon. before his name. Susan, where are you?”

Susan came with a big white apron on, her mouth full of pins and a ball of twine in her hands.

“Susan, were the Godfrey Sheldons invited?”

“Godfrey Sheldons—who are they?” Mrs. White replied, spitting the pins from her mouth.

“Why, that red-headed chap in the country who went to the Legislature and thinks he knows all creation; biggest depositor in my bank, with two red-headed girls like himself. You must know ’em. They sit three pews from us in church, across the aisle, and wear infernal big hats, while he reads the loudest of anybody, as if the Lord was deaf, and looks round to see who is listening to him. You must know him.”

Mrs. White did remember the big hats and the pompous man, who read scarcely louder than her husband. “But I have no acquaintance with them,” she said. “I believe Herbert did suggest that they be invited, with a lot of others, who went into the waste basket. I asked the Gibsons from the Corners. Their son was in Yale with Fred, and their daughter has been to Vassar, but I didn’t suppose you wanted all the country people invited who deposit with you, or I would have taken your bank list.”

“Of course not,” the judge replied. “That would have included Nancy Sharp and a lot more like her. Maybe that is what ails Sheldon, who is drawing all his money at one lick, five thousand dollars, without giving us notice. Not that it will burst the bank, but it looks queer when he has always been so friendly with me.”

There was a call for Mrs. White, and she hurried away, giving no more thought to Godfrey Sheldon and his red-headed daughters.

The carriage was at the door by this time, and the judge, with his sister, Miss Percy, and Fred Lansing, were soon driving in the direction of the bank. As they turned into a cross street they passed Louie, resting on her wheel and talking with a young man, also on a wheel, who seemed to have come from the opposite direction, and was evidently telling something which excited them both. As the carriage came up their voices dropped, but Fred Lansing was sure he caught the word “bank,” and remembered afterward the peculiar look both gave to the judge.

“That’s an awfully pretty girl,” Fred said to Miss Percy. “A Miss Grey, isn’t it?” and he turned to the judge, who answered, rather coldly:

“I didn’t notice particularly. There is a Grey girl in town some people think pretty. She is generally on the street—quite a gadder. She is Tom Grey’s daughter. He is running a little one-horse bank beside mine. But he can’t hold out, with no capital that anybody knows of. I gave him six months when he started, and he’s been at it four years, but he’ll come to the end of his rope. Yes, sir! you’ll see. Hallo! what under the heavens are those women running like that for? Is there a fire?” he added, as on passing a corner he saw several women running rapidly in the direction of Main Street, headed by Nancy Sharp, the washerwoman from White’s Row, a part of whose small savings were deposited in his bank, and who worked for his wife at intervals by way of paying her rent.

Two of the women had on sun-bonnets, but Nancy was bareheaded, with her sleeves rolled up and her big apron on, showing she had just come from her washtub.

“What has happened?” he continued, as a woman came from another door and ran bareheaded down the street, where she was joined by three more, all evidently greatly excited, and talking loudly as they ran.

They had now reached a point from which they could see the white marble walls of his bank in the distance. In front of it quite a crowd was gathered, while it seemed to be the point toward which the women were running. David, the coachman, called the judge’s attention to it, and the latter was standing up to look when Louie Grey darted by on her wheel.

“Hallo, girl! what’s your name? Louisa, ain’t it? What’s up? What’s that mob about? Stop, can’t you?” the judge called, with a feeling that Louie was bound for the mob, and could tell him what it meant.

His voice was like a trumpet, and the “Louisa” reached Louie, who turned quickly, and, coming back to meet the carriage, replied in some surprise, “Why, it’s a run on the bank. Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard?”

With a slight inclination of her head to the ladies and to Fred Lansing, who had lifted his hat, she was off like the wind, while the judge sank down upon the seat, and, rubbing his fat hands complacently together, said:

“A run on Grey’s bank! I told you so. I knew he couldn’t go on much longer. No, sir! He’s come to the end of his rope; speculated a little too often. I knew he would. Drive faster, Dave; I want to get there.”

Dave touched the spirited blacks, which sprang forward at so rapid a rate that they came near running into a van full of household goods before it could turn aside.

“Hallo, there, Dave! Stop a minute,” the judge said to the driver, who pulled up suddenly. Then to the truckman, whom he knew, the judge continued, “I say, Pete, when did the run on Grey’s Bank begin, and what started it?”

There was a look of immense surprise on Peter’s face as he stared at the judge for a moment; then a broad grin spread over his features as he replied:

“For the Lord’s sake, jedge, don’t you know ’tain’t Grey’s Bank the runs on. Hain’t you heard? It’s your’n, and looks as if they meant to clean you out, and I guess they’ll do it, too, if you hain’t a pile on hand. The whole town is up in arms. See ’em runnin’ like ants when their nest is broke up.”

He was not a depositor, and he did not like the judge, and with another grin, he chirruped to his horses and passed on, while the judge fell back in his seat again, gasping for breath and pulling at his collar as if it were too tight and choked him.

CHAPTER V
THE RUN

As the judge was a warden, he seldom swore. He didn’t think “the Devil” was a swear word, and he said it now very emphatically, as he clutched his collar.

“A run on my bank! On the First National! That’s as firm as a rock. Inspectors here only a month ago. Why should anybody run, and what for? I can pay every dollar—give me time,” he said.

Then, as he remembered the five thousand dollars Godfrey Sheldon was to draw that morning, and probably had drawn by that time, he gave a little groan, for in case of a prolonged run that might cripple him, he had so much money loaned out.

“Drive on, Dave. Drive like thunder—right into the midst of ’em, an’ run ’em down if they don’t get out of the way,” he shouted, standing up again and gesticulating with the hand which was not fumbling at his throat, in which his heart seemed swelling.

There was no need to urge Dave to drive on. He was as anxious to reach the place as his master, and in a few minutes the black horses were reined up at the door of the bank, the crowd dividing right and left to give them way, and staring at the figure the judge presented, standing now on the seat and shaking his fist at the faces confronting him.

There were at least one hundred people there—men, women and children, especially boys, some frantically pushing and elbowing each other in their efforts to get to the door, from which two or three were emerging with a satisfied look on their faces and something held tight in their hands. Others were spectators drawn there from curiosity, but all filling the walk and the street, and making Fred Lansing think of a mob he once saw in Paris. He had sprung to the ground and said to his uncle:

“David had better take the ladies home at once. This is no place for them.”

“Yes, yes,” the judge replied, and when his sister asked if she should tell his wife to stop the party, he answered: “Stop the party! Thunder! No; why should she? That would be confessing I was broke. I ain’t by a long shot. I’ve money enough to pay these cattle a hundred times over. Not in the bank this minute, of course. But I can get it. The cusses! What do they mean? Running me! Me!”

He shook his fist threateningly at the crowd, one of whom, a ragged boy, called out derisively:

“Shake away, old money bags; nobody’s afraid of you, but my mother wants her fifty dollars, and she’s goin’ to have it. She put ten dollars in Saturday, and nobody told her you was busted.”

The judge did not hear him. He was struggling up the steps, assisted by Fred to the door, where he was met by Herbert, who was white as a corpse, with a scared look on his face.

“Oh, father,” he cried, “I’m so glad you have come. I should have sent for you, but thought you were off in the country driving. There’s the old Harry to pay.”

“Pay him then! There’s money enough,” the judge roared, going behind the screens and facing the two women presenting their claims and demanding their money, which they promptly received.

It was a genuine run, such as small places like Merivale seldom see, and just how it commenced, or why, no one could tell, unless it were Godfrey Sheldon, who was a weak-brained, pig-headed, jealous man, thinking far too much of himself since his one term in the Legislature. He was very proud of his friendship with Judge White, whom he would sometimes slap on the shoulder and call “old boy,” by way of showing his familiarity with the great man of the town. He knew he was the heaviest depositor in the White Bank, and presumed a good deal on that account, and sometimes chafed because no attention was ever paid his family by Mrs. White and not much by Herbert.

“My girls are as good as anybody,” he was wont to say of his two red-headed daughters, who fully concurred with him in his opinion of themselves.

They certainly were as good as the Gibsons, they thought; and when the grand party came to the front and the Gibsons were invited and they were not, their jealousy was at once excited, but did not reach the boiling point, which meant mischief, until a report reached them that Mrs. White had been heard to say that, aside from the Gibsons, she drew the line on all country bumpkins, and especially the Sheldons. This, of course, was an exaggeration of what she did say, but, passing through the many lips it did, it is strange it had not assumed greater proportions by the time it reached and fired the Sheldon household.

The girls were furious, and their father was not far behind them. For him, an Honorable, to be classed with country bumpkins was an insult not to be borne meekly; and, like most small natures, revenge of some sort was his first thought.

But how should he take it? What could he do that a man like Judge White would feel? Suddenly he remembered his money, which he had always kept in the White Bank, and as he was needing a small part of it soon, he would take it all out and deposit it with Tom Grey. There was a man who did not feel so all-fired big, and whose daughter was nice to his girls and had once spent a day at his house and had Sarah and May at a musicale the winter before. Yes, he’d withdraw his money from Bob White and give it to Tom Grey, he decided, without any thought of creating a panic which might result in a run; nor had he any such idea when he spoke to two or three of his neighbors and told them what he was going to do, giving no reason, when asked for one, except that he knew what he was about and accompanying the words with a gesture which was more suggestive than words.

Some people are always suspicious of the soundness of a bank, and the few to whom Mr. Sheldon told his intentions were of this class, and all had money in White’s Bank.

If Godfrey Sheldon, who was hand in glove with the judge, was going to take out his money, there must be something wrong. They would go to the village and see.

Accordingly, that night there was quite a number of people from the country in town, talking low and confidentially to others; and before bedtime there was scarcely a depositor who had not heard it hinted that the White Bank was shaky. A few disbelieved it, while others thought it well to be on the safe side and take out what money they had before it was too late. The country depositors were specially cautious, and on hand early. Before nine o’clock many vehicles were in town. Some were at the hotel; others were under shade trees and in the shed behind the church, while the owners were congregated near the banks, waiting for them to open. These were joined at intervals by some of the villagers, and as the news spread the number increased and more were coming, until the street was black with them.

Herbert, who was downtown on an errand for his mother, had stepped into the bank to speak to the cashier, with whom he was talking for some time, unconscious of what was taking place outside. Hearing the sound of many voices, followed at last by a vigorous shaking of the heavy doors, which had not yet been opened to the public, he looked from the window and, seeing the crowd, exclaimed to the cashier:

“Harry, Harry, what is all this? and why are there so many people in front of the bank acting as if they meant to get in?”

One glance at the crowd, and it flashed upon the cashier like a presentiment that here was a run. He had been in one before, when the bank, which if left to its ordinary business, was safe, went down under the overwhelming tide, and his voice shook as he said:

“It looks like a run!”

“A run!” Herbert repeated. “Not on father’s bank, sure. It must be on Grey’s.”

“No, it is this one,” the cashier replied. “They are all looking at our windows, and don’t you hear the pounds on the door; and see, there are more coming—a lot of women, headed by old Nancy Sharp, with her arms akimbo and her hair down her back. It is a regular run, and no mistake!”

“Well, let them run. There’s money enough to pay all their demands, isn’t there?” Herbert asked.

The cashier shook his head doubtfully.

“If we had on hand all we have loaned out we could stand it. But no bank has that. The loans are greater, of course, than the amount kept for emergencies, and if all the depositors spring upon us, as most are likely to do if one does, we may be swamped for a time. There’s Sheldon gave notice last night that he must have his five thousand to-day. If he would wait till to-morrow, when a heavy loan we have out will be paid, we shall be all right. But he won’t; he is a kind of a dog in the manger, and something has gone wrong. He’ll draw his money, and others will follow. Men are like sheep, and women are worse. There is Sheldon now talking to some men and pointing this way.”

The pounding on the door was loud by this time, mingled with calls:

“Let us in! It’s time! It’s after nine. You have no business to keep us out, and we mean to come in.”

“Shall we keep them out till father comes?” Herbert asked, his teeth chattering with the cold chill which had come over him and increased with the sounds outside. It was a kind of roar now, as the cries, “Open the door!” became louder—cries of more women than men, as the former were more excited. “Say, shall we keep them out till father comes?” Herbert asked again.

“By no means,” the cashier replied. “That would confess our fear. Possibly we can persuade Sheldon to leave a part of his till to-morrow. Open the door, Charlie,” and he turned to the office boy, whose eyes were like saucers as he shot back the bolts and threw open the doors so suddenly that two or three of the foremost ones, pushed by those behind, fell headlong across the threshold.

Mr. Sheldon, who was in advance, was the first on his feet and inside the bank.

He knew by this time what the crowd meant, and he had explained, as far as he could, that he was only drawing his money because he wanted it, and not because he was afraid. He might as well have talked to the wind. Their minds were made up. If he wanted his money, they wanted theirs, and meant to have it.

When Mr. Sheldon presented himself before the cashier and said to him, “You know I told you I was coming for my money. I suppose it’s ready?” the cashier replied very blandly, “Certainly it is.”

At this point Herbert, who was standing by the cashier, with a face white as marble, interposed and said:

“Of course, you can have it, but it seems to me it is a large sum to draw out without a moment’s warning. Can’t you wait for a part of it till to-morrow? Suppose those fellows behind you should all demand their money at once, what should we do?”

This was like a red flag to a maddened bull. Herbert was the son of the house, and it was undoubtedly his doings that the Gibsons were invited and his daughters slighted. Any regret Sheldon might have had for what he was doing vanished, and he replied:

“Hanged if I care what you do,” while the cashier, who was counting out the bills, kicked Herbert with his foot trying to stop him, as he saw he was making matters worse by showing fear.

The cashier, however, tried what he could do by saying very cheerfully:

“You can have more if you wish, but it would be a convenience if you could wait till to-morrow, when a heavy loan is to be paid.”

He had half the money counted, and paused for a reply, which was, “I shan’t wait an hour. I want my money now!” the words accompanied by a nod to emphasize each word.

“All right,” the cashier answered, going on with his work, while one or two standing behind Mr. Sheldon said:

“What’s that he says? Wants us to wait till to-morrow? Not much! We will have it now.”

The words were caught up by those outside, and ran through the crowd like wildfire, gaining strength as they ran, until by the time they reached the outer circle it was affirmed that the bank could pay no more that day.

Those who have witnessed a run on a bank know how the excitement grows until people, ordinarily cool and sane, grow wild and mad, and howl sometimes like beasts at the prospect of losing their money. And so it was now at the White Bank, where the excitement was intense, especially among the small depositors—the women, whose little was all in the bank. These were furious, and made their way to the door just as Mr. Sheldon came out, with a half sheepish look on his face, as if he had done a mean thing, and was half sorry for it.

“But Bob White can stand it,” he thought, as he walked into Grey’s Bank, where the consternation and excitement was nearly as great as in the other bank, and where Louie on her wheel had just arrived, breathless and panting.

When Mr. Grey first saw the crowd gathering in the street he had no suspicion of the cause until he heard the pounds upon the door and the cries to be let in. Then he said to Mr. Wilson, his cashier:

“What upon earth is the matter? Looks like a run?”

“’Tis a run,” Mr. Wilson answered dryly, opening their own door and stepping outside, where he stood, occasionally exchanging a word with some one asking if he thought the bank could stand the pressure.

Wilson didn’t know. All depended upon how much ready cash it had on hand. No bank expected to be called on any minute for every dollar, he said. Bob White could pay all he owed twice over, give him time, and his advice was that the howling idiots disperse and go home.

The howling idiots had no thought of going home. Some of those who at first had no intention to draw out their money concluded to do so now, if they could get a chance. And there lay a trouble. It took some time to pay off the applicants who were first in, and some time for them to get out, so thickly were the people packed upon the steps, and so unwilling were they to yield an inch of ground, and the excitement was increasing when the judge’s carriage dashed down the street and up to the door.

The sight of the judge standing on the seat and flourishing his hands brought a slight lull in the storm of voices, and the people watched him curiously and wondered what he was going to do. He did not know himself—the whole thing was so appalling and unexpected that he trembled with fear as he went up the steps, anxious to get inside, where he felt he should be safer than outside in the midst of that cyclone. When at last he was in the bank and stood inside the screen facing the two women, he felt better, and glaring at them savagely, asked:

“How much do you want?”

“Twenty-five dollars that I earned with my eggs and chickens,” and “Thirty dollars I earned by washing,” were the replies, as two pairs of brown, hard hands were stretched out eagerly toward Harry Groves, the cashier.

“Twenty-five dollars and thirty dollars! A big sum to make such a row about. Pay ’em, Groves; and now get out of here,” the judge said angrily; then, to the office boy, “Shut those doors a minute, and keep that infernal rabble out till I can think and hear what you’ve done and how much money there is left.”

It was not so easy a matter to shut the doors with that human wall pressing against them, and only the tact of Fred Lansing availed to do it. He was very cool and calm and reassuring, asking the people to stand aside a moment, and telling them the doors should certainly be opened again.

“The judge has just come,” he said, “and this is a great surprise. He wants to hear something about it from his clerks, and can’t very well with so much noise in the street, if the door is open. So, my good lady, if you will please step out, I am sure others will follow you. That’s right; thank you.”

This was to Nancy Sharp, who had fought her way into the vestibule and was holding aloft her bank-book and flourishing her bare, red arms, which showed frequent acquaintance with soapsuds. She had money in both banks, and, although she had not much in White’s, she didn’t propose to lose it, she said, and she at first looked defiantly at Fred Lansing, when he tried to clear the vestibule. But when he beamed upon her a smile which few women ever resisted and called her “my good lady,” she was vanquished at once, and walked out, saying to her companions, who were all women, “Come on, gals, but stick close to the door, so’s to get in the minit it is opened. It will be opened?” and she looked at Fred, who answered:

“Certainly, madam. I give you my word of honor. It will be opened and you will be paid.”

“All right,” and Nancy nodded familiarly to him as she took her place on the steps outside and stood very near to Louie, who had entered her father’s bank at the rear and had come to the front door, where she stared astounded at the scene and thankful that it was not her father’s bank on which the run was made.

There was a brass railing in the centre of the stone steps leading to the entrance of the two banks, and as Louie leaned against it her arm was seized by Nancy, who began to talk loud and volubly of the failure, as she called it, and the loss to her if the judge did not pay.

“I was a fool to put any with him,” she said, “but I thought two places safer than one, and now see what I’ve got by it. Twenty good, round silver dollars in the bank, and every one means a hard day’s work a-washin’—two for the Whites, two for your folks, one for Miss Smith, one for Mrs. Dr. Adams, and one for——”

She would probably have enumerated every family represented by her twenty round silver dollars if Louie had not stopped her with a “Hush-h! Look up there. He is going to speak,” and she pointed to a balcony in the second story, where Judge White stood, waving his hands to enforce silence. He had inquired into matters a little, and learned from his cashier how much had already been drawn from the bank, and about how much currency there was left.

“Godfrey Sheldon’s five thousand was a blow,” the cashier said. “There are three more who have each a thousand deposited. They haven’t appeared yet, and I hope they won’t. It is the small depositors who are making the biggest row, and there is a pile of ’em.”

The judge knew this, and knew, too, that within the last year or two, when his rival had seemed to prosper, he had tried in underhand ways, by sly insinuations and sneers against the Grey Bank, to secure the patronage of these very people, who in a panic lose all sense and reason, and now he was reaping his reward.

“If those big fellows keep quiet, and I think they will—they are a different class—we may pull through; or if you could persuade them that everything is sound and square and there is no need for this run. But I doubt if you can. They keep coming from every quarter, like bees round a honeypot. There’s a whole load of fresh ones!” the cashier said, pointing to a democrat wagon full of men and women from the country, driving up in hot haste, either to see what was going on or to get what was due them, the latter most likely, as the moment they alighted they pushed through the crowd, asking eagerly, “Are we too late? Has it bust?”

The judge groaned, and thought a moment. He was perspiring at every pore, and had removed his coat and necktie and collar, so as to breathe more freely.

“I’ll speak to ’em,” he said. “I’ll tell ’em to go home. By the Lord, I wish I had a shotgun! I’d fire into ’em. It’s like a strike, and against me—me!”

He was purple in the face, and shaking with rage, and Fred Lansing doubted the expediency of his speaking to the crowd in his present mood. But he was determined, and nothing could stop him. The idiots would listen to him, Judge White, and going up the stairs which led from his rear office to the hall of the second floor, he entered a law office along whose windows a narrow balcony ran. This was filled with the occupants of the second floor, but they made room for the judge, whose voice, always strong and powerful, rang out like a great horn, and attracted every eye to him as he stood, coatless and hatless, with collar and necktie gone, his face purple, except his nose and lips, which were ghastly white. He was not much like the faultlessly attired man the people had been accustomed to see driving in his handsome carriage behind his black horses and his coachman in brown-coated and brass-buttoned livery, a thing some had ridiculed as airs, and others had resented as a badge of servitude not fitted to a small place like Merivale. The judge was not popular, and had never tried to make himself so, except when there was something to be gained by it. As a rule, he was haughty and arrogant, ignoring the common people entirely, or noticing them with a nod which told the distance he thought there was between them and himself.

At sight of him and the sound of his voice shouting, “Order, you fellows! Order, I say! Don’t you hear me?” a hush fell for a moment on the crowd; then, a group of boys, some of whom had felt the weight of his gold-headed cane when he caught them in his melon patch, set up a caterwauling, with cries of:

“There he is! There’s old money bags! Isn’t he a beauty? He’s going to make a speech. Better give us what you owe us than your gab.”

But for Fred Lansing, Herbert would have rushed into the street and collared the boys insulting his father, who tottered as if about to fall and leaned heavily on his cane, as the cries came up to him, louder and more vociferous.

“Silence, you ragamuffins, you villains, you fools!” he roared, flourishing his cane in the air, and in his backward sweep almost hitting Fred Lansing, who had hurried up the stairs and stood at his side, with an arm on his shoulder to steady him, and something in his manner which commanded attention and respect.

“My dear friends, ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “Please keep quiet and let the judge speak and explain matters, which he can do to your entire satisfaction.”

Cries of “Go on, go on; hear, hear!” now came from the boys, one of whom was knocked down by a sympathizer with the judge, who saw the act and called out, “Yes, that’s it; knock ’em all down; wring their necks; send for the police and have ’em arrested, every mother’s son of ’em.”

“Hush! Hush!” Fred Lansing said in a whisper. “Go it mild, or you are lost.”

It was not in the judge’s nature to “go it mild,” but he made an effort and began to explain that there was no earthly reason for this outrage, and he didn’t know how it happened or who started it. Whoever did was an infernal fool, and ought to be tarred and feathered. “Running on me! Me! who has inspectors reg’lar. Now, if ’twas t’other bank, that runs itself, with nobody to oversee what was going on, there might be some sense in getting up this hullabaloo! But to spring it on me—me! It’s an outrage. Lord Harry, don’t you know who I am!”

“Oh, rot, rot. We know who you be, so come to business and tell us how many cents on a dollar you can pay,” came from the boys, who belonged to the worst class in town, and were glad for this opportunity to scoff at a big bug without fear.

“Hush! Go a little easier,” Fred Lansing said, and the judge replied, “‘Tain’t so easy goin’ easy with such dirt.” Then, to the dirt, he continued:

“Look here and listen. I can pay every red cent and a hundred times more—only give me time. I’m an honest man, I am. Nobody ever said I wasn’t, but no bank wants a thing sprung on it like this, and few can stand it if everybody calls for their deposit and wants every dollar taken out at once. Heavens and earth,” he continued, warming up to the subject and growing more and more excited as he warmed, “are you fools enough to suppose that all your deposits are lying just where I put ’em when you brought ’em in? Where, I’d like to know, would I get my pay for my trouble, if I didn’t loan ’em out, keeping enough on hand to satisfy all reasonable demands, though not enough to meet a general run sprung on me unawares. It’s something like this: Suppose you owed somebody, and somebody else owed you enough to pay the somebody you owed, and the somebody you owed should come up and insist on being paid, the day before the somebody who owed you was going to pay what he owed, what would you do?”

He was getting rather hazy with “the somebody who owed him” and “the somebody whom he owed,” but his audience followed him pretty clearly as he went on: “Just so with me. You come howling for your money, set on by the Lord only knows who; but I can guess pretty well,” and he glanced toward Grey’s Bank, while a low murmur of dissent began to run through the crowd, and one or two voices called out, “You are off the track, old chap.”

To this the judge paid no attention, and went on:

“Yes, I say you come howling like dogs, as if you thought every cent of your money was lying loose in the bank, ready to be called out in a minute. I tell you ’tain’t so; but to-morrow a big loan is coming in and you shall have every d——”

He paused a moment, thinking to use a swear word, then changed his mind, and added, “every darned dollar. Are you satisfied? If you are, go home about your business, and be ashamed for the way you have treated me—me! If not, do your worst, and be——” he did use a swear word then, and added: “What are you going to do with your money when you get it? Keep it in your houses till it is stolen by burglars, or what?”

The majority of his audience had seen the truth in his remarks, and a few, who had intended to withdraw their money, if they could get a chance, slipped to the opposite side of the street, where they stood watching, what one of them said was “as good as a circus.” In response to the judge’s question, “What are you going to do with your money when you get it?” an answer came from a dozen throats: “Put it in Grey’s Bank, where Sheldon has put his’n. It’s safe there. Grey is the man for us. Grey is all right!”

“Put it there and be ——,” the judge swore again, while from the boys, whose numbers had considerably increased, there went up “Three cheers and a tiger for Grey, the honest banker, and a groan for “money bags.””

The cheers and tiger were given, but before the groan for “money bags” the fence on which the boys were seated went down with a crash, diverting the interest for a moment from the judge, who left the balcony and returned to the bank, where he sank exhausted into a chair, looking so white that Herbert was alarmed, and asked if they should not send for a doctor.

“Thunder, no!” his father said. “What do we want of a doctor? More like send for the police. Hear that thundering on the door, will you! Open, and let ’em in; the sooner the farce is over the better. I b’lieve we can stand it.”

CHAPTER VI
LOUIE COMES TO THE RESCUE

When she heard the cry, “Put it in Grey’s Bank, where Sheldon has put his,” she started quickly, struck with a thought of something she had read about. Going into the bank, where two or three were already depositing their money, she drew her father aside and said:

“Do you think the White Bank can stand the run?”

“Doubtful, if the most of them pitch in as they seem likely to do. They are just crazy, and one excites the other.”

“Then we must help him,” Louie said.

“Help him? We can’t disperse that rabble, and the entire scum of the town is here. Every depositor may ask for his money. No bank can stand that,” her father answered.

“I don’t mean to disperse the rabble,” Louie replied. “Many of them are bringing their money to you, and as fast as they bring it we can take it through our back door into the back door of the other bank and keep it circulating.”