"The Estate owns your National Bank Building, doesn't it?" asked Martin
Acres, who knew that it did.

"Yes, and a controlling interest in the stock besides, more is the pity!
I never like to have a woman own stock in my bank," Stark Coleman
answered, throwing himself back upon the spring of his revolving chair.

"Why?" This from Acres, who did like to have women make accounts at his
store.

"Dangerous. It is well enough for women to owe--that's their nature--but
not to own. Look at the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad
scandal!"

He was a short fat man with large blue eyes beneath swollen lids, and at
the present moment some inner pressure seemed to increase their
prominence.

"What has that to do with women?"

"Proves my point. Wouldn't have been such a racket over that scandal if
half the widows and orphans in New England hadn't been pinched. Men are
good losers. They keep quiet. Know better than to destroy their credit
by squealing. Women have no credit, so they all squeal. And the
sentimental public always adds to the clamour," Coleman concluded,
mopping his face.

"Briggs collects rent from every store and business house around this
square," Acres went on.

"And he told me he handles mortgages on nineteen thousand acres of land
in this county," laughed the third man, who was young and who had been
listening with the detached air of a humourist.

"You can afford to laugh, Sasnett," retorted the banker; "you are one of
the few men in this town not affected by this--er--disaster. But a good
many of the rest of us may find ourselves in a hell of a hole if that
woman has willed everything she had to the church or to some orphan
asylum!"

"Why?" asked Sasnett, still smiling in the provoking manner of a man who
has nothing to lose.

"I couldn't do business with every loan and investment to be passed upon
by a board of directors reeking with preachers and eleemosynary
trustees. They are all damphules, with empty breeches pockets, and craws
filled with morbid scruples. How do I know there won't be a woman among
them! Good Lord! Think of a woman on the board of directors in a bank!"
snorted Coleman.

"Well, it couldn't be as bad as that," said Acres, as he pulled at the
ends of his wiry gray moustache.

"Yes, it can! It can be as bad as hell, I tell you. Nobody knows what
that woman's done. And when you don't know what a woman's done, you may
be sure it's worse than you can imagine!" Coleman insis