into the hallway, and called. He kept
calling, his tones growing more emphatic, till the girl replied from
abovestairs.

"She's coming down," reported the general manager of the household,
taking his stand in front of the fireplace. He pulled on a chain and
dragged out a bunch of keys and whirled them like a David taking aim
with a sling.

Vona came no farther than the doorway, and stood framed there.

"What's this last nonsense--that you won't go to your work in the
morning?"

"Your pay is raised ten dollars a week, starting to-morrow,"
supplemented Britt, appealingly.

But there was no compromise in the girl's mien. "Mr. Britt, I realize
perfectly well that I ought to give you due notice--the usual two weeks.
That would be the honorable business way. But you have set the example
of disregarding business methods, in your treatment of Mr. Vaniman. You
mustn't blame others for doing as you're doing. Therefore I positively
will not come into the bank, as conditions are. As I feel to-night I
shall feel to-morrow! If you, or my father and mother, think you can
change my mind on the matter, you'll merely waste your arguments."

That time she did not run away. She surveyed them in turn, leisurely
and perfectly self-possessed. Even the optimist recognized inflexibility
when he was bumped against it hard enough! She stepped backward,
challenging reply, but they were silent, and she went upstairs.

"Still, nobody knows what the morning may bring forth," persisted
Harnden, after waiting for somebody else to speak. "As I have said, I
have a knack--"

"Of blowing up paper bags and listening to 'em bust!" snarled the
banker, permitting himself, at least, to express his real opinion of
a man whom he had always held to be an impractical nincompoop. "If you
count cash the way you count chickens before they're hatched, you'd make
a paper bag out of my bank. I'll bid you good night!"

He wrenched away from Harnden's restraining hands and shook himself
under the shower of the optimist's pattering words, as a dog would
shake off rain. In the hall he pulled on his overcoat and turned up the
collar, for the words still pattered. He went out into the night and
slammed the door.

Britt began his program of general anathema by shaking his fist at the
Harnden house after he had reached the street. He shook his fist at the
other houses along the way as he went tramping in the middle of the road
toward his home. He even brandished hi