THE WINDOW OF THE SPHINX
wouldn't take another discharge and hung around, drunk, every night. And how about the consignment for the Empire Horse Market? The Empire people swore that it was not up to standard, and they were the ugliest crowd to deal with Morgan had ever seen!
Carron ground his teeth, and consigned Morgan to wretched places. "Damned, pig-headed Welshman! One week more and he'll think he owns the business! He needs me sitting on his neck every minute!" The jar of the business, the tangle and the clatter of it were back upon him with that letter. He realized again dust and plains, and hard work, the eternal drive against time and the importance of it. Morgan and the boys had been "driving," and getting inevitably tangled, while he had rushed off on this wild-goose chase. For what? For nothing but to indulge himself, his fancy for one horse. One horse! True, still if it were the greatest in the world? But that he did not know. He did not know one actual fact. He had not pressed the business, nor pushed it through. He had been mooning among leaves with a girl, filling his head with fancies like a girl, dawdling, blowing hot and cold—and Esmeralda Charley sitting in Beckwith awaiting orders!
He crushed the letter into his pocket and ran up-
163
