The sight so late in the day was an unusual one, for in all the
years that I have called at the Bank--ten, now--no, eleven since
we first knew each other--Peter had seldom failed to be ready for
our walk uptown when the old moon-faced clock high up on the wall
above the stove pointed at four.
"I thought there was something up!" I cried. "What is it, Peter--
balance wrong?"
He did not answer, only waved his hand in reply, his bushy gray
eyebrows moving slowly, like two shutters that opened and closed,
as he scanned the lines of figures up and down, his long pen
gripped tight between his thin, straight lips, as a dog carries a
bone.
I never interrupt him when his brain is nosing about like this; it
is better to keep still and let him ferret it out. So I sat down
outside the curved rail with its wooden slats backed by faded
green curtains, close to the big stove screened off at the end of
the long room, fixed one eye on the moon-face and the other on the
ostrich egg, and waited.
There are no such banks at the present time--were no others then,
and this story begins not so very many years' ago--A queer, out-
of-date, mouldy old barn of a bank, you would say, this Exeter--
for an institution wielding its influence.
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