He didn't care for pie or automobiles--he had his bank. It was an
institution, and it come pretty near bein' the beatin' heart o' this
town in its time. Well, that ole man used to pass one o' these here
turned-up-nose and turned-up-pants cigarette boys on the streets.
Never spoke to him, Tracy didn't. Speak to him? God! he wouldn't 'a'
coughed on him! He wouldn't 'a' let him clean the cuspidors at the
bank! Why, if he'd 'a' just seen him standin' in FRONT the bank he'd
'a' had him run off the street. And yet all Tracy was doin' every
day of his life was workin' for that cigarette boy! Tracy thought it
was for the bank; he thought he was givin' his life and his life-blood
and the blood of his brain for the bank, but he wasn't. It was every
bit--from the time he went in at seventeen till he died in harness at
eighty-three--it was every last lick of it just slavin' for that
turned-up-nose, turned-up-pants cigarette boy. AND TRACY DIDN'T EVEN
KNOW HIS NAME! He died, not ever havin' heard it, though he chased
him off the front steps of his house once. The day after Tracy died
his old-maid daughter married the cigarette--and there AIN'T any Tracy
bank any more! And now"--his voice rose again--"and now I got a
cigarette son-in-law!"
Gurney pointed to the flourishing right hand without speaking, and
Sheridan once more returned it to the sling.
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