Janet Eberly was, at the beginning of her friendship with Sam, a slight
woman of twenty-seven with a small expressive face, quick nervous fingers,
black piercing eyes, black hair and a way of becoming so absorbed in the
exposition of a book or the rush of a conversation that her little intense
face became transfigured and her quick fingers clutched the arm of her
listener while her eyes looked into his and she lost all consciousness of
his presence or of the opinions he may have expressed. She was a cripple,
having fallen from the loft of a barn in her youth injuring her back so
that she sat all day in a specially made reclining wheeled chair.
Edith was a stenographer, working in the office of a publisher down town,
and Janet trimmed hats for a milliner a few doors down the street from the
house in which they lived. In his will the father left the money from the
sale of the farm to Janet, and Sam used it, insuring his life for ten
thousand dollars in her name while it was in his possession and handling
it with a caution entirely absent from his operations with the money of
the medical student. "Take it and make money for me," the little woman had
said impulsively one evening shortly after the beginning of their
acquaintance and after Jack Prince had been talking flamboyantly of Sam's
ability in affairs.
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