, an'
here I am in debt, an' they sendin' out for the money; an' I've
worked so hard to build up my business, an' tried to make things
nice, an' please, an' here I've got to fail. Oh, dear!" Suddenly she
made a weak rush across the room, her silk petticoat giving out a
papery rustle, her frizzes vibrating like wire under her hat, crested
with ostrich plumes. She danced up to Carroll and looked at him with
indescribable piteousness of accusation. "Why couldn't you, if you
had to cheat, cheat a man an' not a woman like me?" she demanded, in
her high-pitched tremolo.

Carroll took his cigar from his mouth and looked at her. His face was
quite pale and rigid. Even Tappan stopped, watching the two. Madame
Griggs held up, with almost a sublimity of accusation, her tiny,
nervous, veinous hands. The fingers were long and the knuckles were
slightly enlarged with strenuous pullings of needles and handling of
scissors; the forefinger was calloused. "Look at my hands," said she.
"See how thin they be. I've worked them 'most to the bone for your
folks. I took a lot of pride in havin' your daughter look nice when
she was married. If I was a man an' goin' to steal, I'd steal from
somebody besides a woman with no more strength than I have, all alone
in the world, and that's been knocked hard ever since she can
remember." Then she brought a stiffly starched little handkerchief
from the folds of a small purse, and she wept with a low, querulous
wail like a baby. Standing before Carroll, "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!
Oh--dear!" she wailed.

Carroll laid a hand on her shaking shoulder. It felt to him like a
vibrating bone, so meagre it was. He bent over her and said something
that the others did not hear, but her wild rejoinder gave them the
key. She was fairly desperate; all her obsequiousness had
disappeared. She was burning with her wrongs; she even took a certain
pleasure in letting herself loose. She shook her shoulder free from
his touch. She turned on him, her tearful, convulsed face uncovered,
her frizzes tossing, as bold and unrestrained in her wrath as was
Minna Eddy, who came forward to her side as she spoke.

"You needn't come wheedlin' around me," she cried. "I don't believe a
word of it, not a word. I'll believe it when I see the color of your
cash. You're dreadful soft-spoken, an' so is your wife an' your
sister an' your daughters. Dreadful soft-spoken! Plenty of soft soap
runnin' all over every time you open your mouth. I don't