want to talk with you alone first. Now, Isaiah, sit down! Sit down
in that chair. I want you to tell me just how bad things are. Tell me
everything, all you know about it, and don't try to make the situation
better than it is. And please HURRY!"

Isaiah, bewildered but obedient, sat down. The command to hurry had the
effect of making him so nervous that, although he talked enough to have
described the most complicated situation, his ideas were badly snarled
and Mary had to keep interrupting in order to untangle them. And, after
all, what he had to tell was not very definite. Business was bad at the
store; that was plain to everyone in town. "All hands" were trading
at the new stores where prices were lower, stocks bigger and more
up-to-date, and selling methods far, far in advance of those of Hamilton
and Company.

"About the only customers that stick by us," declared Isaiah, "are folks
like 'Rastus Young and the rest of the deadbeats. THEY wouldn't leave us
for nothin'--and nothin's what they pay, too, drat 'em!"

The partners had not told him of their troubles, but telling was not
necessary. He had seen and heard enough.

"They are right on the ragged edge of goin' on the rocks," vowed Isaiah.
"Zoeth, he's that thin and peaked 'twould make a sick pullet look fleshy
alongside of him. And Cap'n Shad goes around with his hands rammed down
in his beckets--"

"In his what?"

"In his britches pockets, and he don't scurcely speak a word for hours