'I understand your very natural feelings,' the other began again. 'You already consider us your enemies. That is really not strictly so. Although we are, in a sense, business opponents, we have found by experience that it is often mutually advantageous for two establishments of the same nature such as yours and ours to be together.'
'Do ye tell me, now,' said Brodie ironically, as the other paused impressively, and, not knowing his man or the symptoms of his gathering wrath, expansively continued.
'Yes, that is so, Mr. Brodie. We find that such a combination attracts more people to that particular centre, more shopping is done there, and this, of course, is advantageous to both shops. We multiply the trade and divide the profits! That's our arithmetic,' he concluded, as he imagined rather neatly.
Brodie looked at him icily.
'You're talkin' a lot of damned lies,' he said roughly. 'Don't think ye can pull the wool over my eyes like that, and don't refer to my business in the same breath as your own gimcrack huckster's trade. You've come here to try and poach on my preserves and I'm goin' to treat you like a low poacher.'
The other smiled. 'You surely can't mean that! I represent a reputable firm; we have branches everywhere, we are not poachers. I am going to open the new branch myself and I want to be with you. And you,' he added flatteringly, 'well you certainly don't look like a man who could fail to understand the value of cooperation.'
'Don't talk to me about your blasted cooperation,' cried Brodie, 'if that's the name ye give to stealing other folks' custom.'
'I hope you don't mean us to infer that you have the exclusive rights to monopolise the hat trade here,' said the other, with some indignation.
'I don't care about the right, I have the might, and I tell ye I'll smash you!' He flexed up his great biceps with a significant gesture. 'Ill smash you to bits.'
'That surely is a childish attitude, Mr. Brodie! Cooperation is better than competition every time. Of course, if you choose to fight,' he waved his hand deprecatingly, 'we have large resources. We have had to cut our prices before, in similar circumstances, and we can easily do it again.'
Brodie threw a glance contemptuously at the pasteboard of the visiting card which lay crushed in his hand.
“Man! Mr. whatever your name is you talk like a penny novelette. I don't intend to reduce my prices one farthing,' he drawled pityingly. 'I have the connection here, that's all, and I'm just man enough to keep it.'
'I see,' the other had replied succinctly; 'you are definitely going out of your way to demand open hostility.'
'By God!' Brodie thundered at him. 'That's the only true word you've spoken yet an' I hope it's the last thing ye will say.'
At these final and unmistakable words the other had turned and walked quietly out of the shop; then, upon the following day the fifteenth of March a small corps of workmen had descended upon the place next door.
They were working now, irritating him intensely by the sound of their labour, by each tap of their hammers which beat with exasperating monotony into his brain. Even in the intervals of silence he was harassed by their presence, kept anticipating the onset of the staccato tattoo, and, when it recommenced, a pulse within him throbbed dangerously in the same tapping rhythm. When the rending of saws on wood came through the dividing wall he winced, as if the saw had rasped his own bones, and at the cold steely sound of the chisels upon stone he frowned, as if they carved upon his brow, above and between his eyes, a deep, vertical furrow of hatred.
They were gutting the shop. The men worked quickly and in the rush to complete their operations as rapidly as possible, worked also overtime; double wages apparently meant nothing to the Mungo Company! At the end of a week they had cleared out the old window frames, the doorway, the dilapidated shelves and counter, the whole worn wreckage of a bygone age, and now the denuded frontage leered at Brodie like a mask, its window spaces the sightless sockets of cyjs and its empty doorway the gaping, toothless mouth. Then the plasterers and decorators added their efforts to those of the joiners and masons, altering visibly, from day to day, by their combined exertions and skill, the entire aspect of the structure. Brodie hated every phase of its change and he encompassed within his growing aversion for the transformed building these workmen who, through their labours, were reconstructing it so admirably and making it the finest and most modern shop in the Borough. On an occasion when one of these had entered Brodie's establishment and, touching his cap, asked civilly if he might be obliged with a bucket of water to make tea for himself and his mates next door, as their own supply had been temporarily suspended at the main, Brodie had shot the astonished man out of his shop-
'Water!' he had snarled. 'Ye want water, and ye have the impertinence to come here for your favours. Ye'll get none of it. If the whole gang o' ye were fryin' in Hell I wouldna so much as put a drop on one o' your tongues. Get out!'
But this animadversion had no effect upon their activities, serving only, or so it seemed to him, to stimulate these, and moodily he observed thick, scintillating plate-glass windows of a green translucency come into place, rich show cases appear like mushrooms in the space of a night, an ornately lettered signboard emerge glittering! Finally, under his eyes, in broad daylight the crowding anathema a nodel of a huge top hat, sumptuously and opulently gilt, was erected above the doorway, where it swung jauntily from its supporting pole with every breath of air. Brodie's demeanour to the town during this period gave, in general, no marked indication of the emotions which he repressed. He manifested outwardly only calm indifference, for his very pride forbade him to speak; and to his acquaintances who rallied him on the matter of the encroachment he exhibited an air of profound contempt towards the new company, met Grierson's gall- dipped witticisms at the Philosophical Club with the assumption of a careless and superior unconcern.
The general opinion was that Brodie would undoubtedly carry the day against the invaders.
'I give them six months,' remarked Provost Gordon judiciously, to the select junta of the club one evening, in Brodie's absence, 'before Brodie drives them out. He's an unco' deevelish man that, for an enemy. Dod, he's quite capable o' layin' a charge o' gunpowder under their braw new shop.'
' 'T would be a risky job wi' that sparky temper o' his,' inserted Grierson.
'He'll spark them out,' replied the Provost. 'He fair beats me, does James Brodie. I know of no man alive who would have come through a' that awf u' pother and disgrace about his daughter without turnin' a hair, or once hangin' his heid. He's a black deevil when his purpose is set.'
'I'm not so sure, Provost; na, na, I'm not just so sure,' drawled the other, 'that the very deliberateness o' him michtna thwart its ain purpose, for he's that obstinate he would try to outface a mule. Forbye, Provost, he's gotten so big for his shoes now that folks aye, even the county folks who liket it at first are beginnin' to get a wheen sick o' it. That grand style o' his is juist like the lordly salmon; a wee bittie is all right, but if ye get it served up a' the time, man, ye get awfu' scunnered by it.'
Seeing himself thus the object of their speculation and sensing its slightly favourable tone, Brodie began to feel that the public eye was turned encouragingly towards him as a defender of the old, solid order of the Borough against the invasion of the trumpery new, and he became, in his appearance, even more of the dandy, ordered two new suits of the finest and most expensive cloth, bought himself in the jeweller's at the Cross a smart, opal tie-pin which he now wore in place of his plain, gold horseshoe. This pin was immediately the object of criticism amongst the cronies and was passed from hand to hand in admiration.
' 'Tis a bonnie stone although I'm no judge,' tittered Gricrson. 'I hope it hasna ruined you to buy it.'
'Don't judge my savings by yours. I know weel enough what I can afford,' retorted Brodie roughly.
'Na! Na! I wouldna dream o' doin' that. Ye're so lavish wi' your money ye maun be worth a mint o' it. I'll warrant ye'll have a wheen o' siller stowed away for a rainy day,' lisped Grierson ambiguously, as his eye flicked Brodie's with ironic insight.
'They say an opal's gey unlucky. The wife's sister had an opal ring that brought her a heap o' misfortune. She had an unco' bad slip the very month she got it,' demurred Pax ton.
'That'll no' happen to me,' replied Brodie coarsely.
'But are ye not feared to wear it?' persisted Paxton.
Brodie looked at him fixedly.
'Man,' he said slowly, 'you ought to know I'm feared of nothing on this God's earth.'
Curiously, although he directed the most scrupulous attention towards his own attire and personal appearance, he would not for an instant entertain the idea of sprucing up his business premises by renewing the drab aspect of his shop, but seemed actually to glory in its unalterable, but recently accentuated, dinginess. When Perry, who had
