Neither was the president.
By what right, he demanded, did this foreigner affront his ears with
demands for money; how dared he force his way into his presence and to
his face babble of back pay? It was insolent, incredible. With
indignation the president set forth the position of the government.
Billy had been discharged and, with the appointment of his successor,
the stranger in the derby hat, had ceased to exist. The government could
not pay money to some one who did not exist. All indebtedness to Billy
also had ceased to exist. The account had been wiped out. Billy had been
wiped out.
The big negro, with the chest and head of a gorilla, tossed his kinky
white curls so violently that the ringlets danced. Billy, he declared,
had been a pest; a fly that buzzed and buzzed and disturbed his
slumbers. And now when the fly thought he slept he had caught and
crushed it--so. President Ham clinched his great fist convulsively and,
with delight in his pantomime, opened his fingers one by one, and held
out his pink palm, wrinkled and crossed like the hand of a washerwoman,
as though to show Billy that in it lay the fly, dead.
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