"It will irritate you and exasperate
you out of all proportion to its importance. And if you have been wronged
in a lower court, remember that many poorer men have been wronged in
higher ones. Come; keep your head clear and your temper calm, and save
them for important things."
The door of the little office opened softly, and one of the important
things began. The door had opened none too widely, yet sufficiently for
the entrance of the thin edge of a wedge--a wedge that was to gain a
tyrannizing force with each inch of advance, as is the wont.
To Bingham it seemed like another of those rats--one that had left the
wainscoting and taken to the floor, regardless (in a boldness at once
insolent and sly) of the presence of humankind. To Marshall it was only
an office-hand from the outer room who now entered with a handful of mail
matter, which he placed, with an air not wholly guiltless of servility
and stealth, upon his employer's desk.
He was a dark man of forty-five, with a black beard and a pair of narrow
eyes. He looked neither of the two occupants of the room full in the
face. His glance was searching and sidelong rather, not so much from the
presence of anything to spy upon as from habit and instinct. One fancied
a man too accustomed to the heavy foot of superiors to decline willingly
any minor advantage that came his way--or any major one.
Bingham's eyes followed him out. "Whom have you there?"
"Somebody of Belden's--a new hand; some of the sediment left from the
Fair.
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