1 Hale sat with his feet up on the stove, his back propped against a battered desk strewn with papers: the place, like the man, was warm, genial and untidy.
2 Rhett now had a desk in the bank.
3 What he did at this desk the bewildered officials of the bank did not know, but he owned too large a block of the stock for them to protest his presence there.
4 At any rate he sat at his desk all day, giving every appearance of industry, for he wished to be on equal terms with his respectable fellow townsmen who worked and worked hard.
5 She passed into the small room, blazing with the afternoon sun, and sat down in the chair before the roll-topped desk.
6 Her maid had kindled a little fire on the hearth, and it contended cheerfully with the sunlight which slanted across the moss-green carpet and caressed the curved sides of an old marquetry desk.
7 "It was simply inhuman of Pragg to go off now," Mrs. Trenor declared, as her friend seated herself at the desk.
8 She settled herself at the desk, and Mrs. Trenor accepted her resumption of the morning's task with a sigh which implied that, after all, she had proved herself unfit for higher uses.
9 Instead, she approached her desk, and lighting a taper, tied and sealed the packet; then she opened the wardrobe, drew out a despatch-box, and deposited the letters within it.
10 Lily sprang out of bed, and went straight to her desk.
11 Lily sat down beside the desk at the foot of her bed, and spreading out the cheque, read over and over the TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS written across it in a steely business hand.
12 She then wrote out a cheque for Trenor, and placing it, without an accompanying word, in an envelope inscribed with his name, laid the two letters side by side on her desk.
13 The desk was closed, but on its slanting lid lay two letters which he took up.
14 He staggered under it, steadying himself against the desk.
15 He raised the lid of the desk, and saw within it a cheque-book and a few packets of bills and letters, arranged with the orderly precision which characterized all her personal habits.