The rain fell uninterruptedly. There was no wind. The cable cars jolted and jostled over the tracks with a strident whir of vibrating window glass. In the street, immediately in front of the entrance to the Board of Trade, a group of pigeons, garnet-eyed, trim, with coral-coloured feet and iridescent breasts, strutted and fluttered, pecking at the handfuls of wheat that a porter threw them from the windows of the floor of the Board.

“Well,” repeated Jadwin, shifting with a movement of his lips his unlit cigar to the other corner of his mouth, “well, what do you think of it?”

The broker, intent upon the figures and statistics, replied only by an indefinite movement of the head.

“Why, Sam,” observed Jadwin, looking up from the paper, “there’s less than a hundred million bushels in the farmers’ hands.⁠ ⁠… That’s awfully small. Sam, that’s awfully small.”

“It ain’t , as you might say, colossal,” admitted Gretry.