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"That girl deserves to be drummed out of town exactly like all the rest of the prostitutes!"

This thought was still in her mind when she entered the bank and went into the directors' room, the only private room in the building. She called sharply through an open door into the cashier's department,

"Brother Perry, I want to see you a minute!"

Mr. Perry Northcutt detached himself grudgingly from the work of drafting a letter to Railroad Jones. It was a delicately poised instrument designed to mark the beginning of a fracture in the relations of the bank and Mr. Jones; or, in the event that the magnate had more property to hypothecate, the letter was intended to cement more firmly the friendship between the bank and the builder; a very diplomatic letter indeed. So now he walked into the directors' room with a projected sentence forming itself in his head.

"Well, Roxie," he asked in a professional tone, "what can I do for you?"

The sight of Perry as the controlling figure in the Irontown Bank always pleased Roxie.

"Perry, I just come to tell you about that Sutton girl in your Sunday-school class. . . . I thought it was my duty," she added as an afterthought.

The cashier looked at his thin gray-haired sister suspiciously. He knew when Roxie's duty moved her to make disclosures they were usually of a compromising nature.

"What did you want to say about her?" he inquired, transferring a little more of his attention from his letter to his sister.

"Perry, your confidence has been violated," she began solemnly.

"What are you talking about, Roxie? The bank hasn't advanced any money to Miss Sutton."

"It isn't money, it isn't as serious as that, but it's bad enough; she has disgraced herself with that Teeftaller boy—an' she's in your Sunday-school class. Such wickedness! Such ingratitude!"