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“Lap-dogs!” laughed McBratney.

“Sure, and you’d a’ thought she had some kind o’ royal blood in her the way she’d strut down the sidewalk.” Bard delved in his hip pocket for his pipe as he pushed his chair back from the table. “A preacher’s wife,” he continued philosophically, but with his usual oracular impressiveness, “has got to be sort o’ human-like. Did you hear what happened to McGuire?”

“No.”

Bard, his empty pipe perched between his teeth, blew several quick blasts of air through it to clear it of sticky contents, while he cut fine shavings of tobacco from a plug with a large-bladed jack-knife.

“I was talkin’ to somebody who had been out west,” he continued, “and McGuire was runnin’ a real estate office, makin’ money too.”

McBratney reserved his comment until he had gone to the door to spit. “That’s a nice job for a preacher to go into, Mr. Bard,” he said, sarcastically. “I guess he wasn’t called of the Lord.”

“I never blamed him!” Bard exclaimed, striking the table with his stubby right hand, from which the middle fingers were gone. “No, sir! He showed the man in him. But there’s just one thing more I’d a’ done!”