Stevens shoved his derby hat back and laughed. "If you think you can run me around with the pop-gun, guess again. I'm going to marry Georgia and you're coming to the wedding," he stepped right up to the gun and tapped Al sharply on the shoulder, "understand."
It was perhaps a chancy thing to do, for the lad had worked himself into a state of self-righteous anger, and his vanity was savagely exulted by the sensation of putting it over on a full-grown man to his face. But Stevens had acted instinctively as he frequently did in stressful moment and his instinct played him true this time.
"She ain't allowed to marry again, so you keep off the grass," he answered loudly, but his voice broke and shot up an octave as he took his hand from his pocket to clench his fist and shake it in the other's face.
Whereat Stevens knew he had him and answered quietly in his most matter-of-fact business tones, "That's for her to say--and she's said it." He smiled. "You know she's free, white, and twenty-one."
Al, not sure just what his next step ought to be, walked away, probably to consult with Moxey, muttering as he went, "Well, remember I warned you."
Stevens returned to the office and explained the incident briefly to Georgia, "Oh, the kid was excited at first, but I reassured him." While they were talking the old man rang her buzzer and asked her to have Mr. Stevens come in.
A dark, beaked, heavy-browed, much-dressed gentleman was in the old man's office, introduced to Mason as Mr. Silverman.
Mr. Silverman deserves a paragraph or two. He was said to be a Polish, a Russian or a Spanish Jew, but nobody knew for sure or dared ask him, for he didn't like it. At sixteen or thereabouts, he came to the company as an office boy, and in two months was indispensable. At thirty-seven, owing partly to the conscientious performance of his duties and more to his earnestness in pulling feet from the rungs above him, and stamping fingers from the rungs below, he was elected to a position especially created for him, to-wit, Executive Secretary to the President of The Eastern Life Insurance Company of New York, which gave him everything to say about the running of it except the very last word.
Perhaps once a quarter he was reversed, and always on some extremely important matter involving the investment of funds. This galled him beyond measure, but he kept it to himself.