Mrs. Billy halted; and Montague remarked, with a smile,
that doubtless she was sorry now that she had done
it.
“Oh, no,” she answered, with a shrug of
her shoulders. “I find that all I have
to do is to be patient—I hate people, and
think I’d like to poison them, but if I only
wait long enough, something happens to them much worse
than I ever dreamed of. You’ll be revenged
on the Robbies some day.”
“I don’t want any revenge,” Montague
answered. “I’ve no quarrel with them—I
simply wish I hadn’t accepted their hospitality.
I didn’t know they were such little people.
It seems hard to believe it.”
Mrs. Billy laughed cynically. “What could
you expect?” she said. “They know
there’s nothing to them but their money.
When that’s gone, they’re gone—they
could never make any more.”
The lady gave a chuckle, and added: “Those
words make me think of Davy’s experience when
he wanted to go to Congress! Tell him about it,
Davy.”
But Mr. Alden did not warm to the subject; he left
the tale to his sister.
“He was a Democrat, you know,” said she,
“and he went to the boss and told him he’d
like to go to Congress. The answer was that it
would cost him forty thousand dollars, and he kicked
at the price. Others didn’t have to put
up such sums, he said—why should he?
And the old man growled at him, ’The rest have
other things to give. One can deliver the letter-carriers,
another is paid for by a corporation. But what
can you do? What is there to you but your money?’—So
Davy paid the money—didn’t you, Davy?”
And Davy grinned sheepishly.
“Even so,” she went on, “he came
off better than poor Devon. They got fifty thousand
out of him, and sold him out, and he never got to
Congress after all! That was just before he concluded
that America wasn’t a fit place for a gentleman
to live in.”
—And so Mrs. Billy got started on the Devons!
And after that came the Havens and the Wymans and
the Todds—it was midnight before she got
through with them all.
The newspapers said nothing more about the Hasbrook
suit; but in financial circles Montague had attained
considerable notoriety because of it. And this
was the means of bringing him a number of new cases.
But alas, there were no more fifty-thousand-dollar
clients! The first caller was a destitute widow
with a deed which would have entitled her to the greater
part of a large city in Pennsylvania—only
unfortunately the deed was about eighty years old.
And then there was a poor old man who had been hurt
in a street-car accident and had been tricked into
signing away his rights; and an indignant citizen
who proposed to bring a hundred suits against the
traction trust for transfers refused. All were
contingency cases, with the chances of success exceedingly
remote. And Montague noticed that the people
had come to him as a last resort, having apparently
heard of him as a man of altruistic temper.
