"You'll get no money from me," was the surly answer. "Fooling away your time and money Saturday night ought to be enough, without using the middle of the week for such extravagance. Anyway, you know well enough I never pay out in advance."
There was an angry murmur from Wapley.
"Who's asking you for money in advance?" he snarled. "Lieson and me's both got money coming to us, and you know it. You pay us right up to the jot to-night or we quit!"
Peabody was quite unmoved. He stood up, leaning against a porch post, his hands in his pockets.
"You can quit, and good riddance to you," he drawled. "But you won't get a cent out of me. You overdrew, both of you, last Saturday, and there's nothing coming to you till a week from this Saturday."
The men were a little confused, neither accustomed to reckoning without the aid of pencil and paper, but Wapley held doggedly to his argument.
"We quit anyway," he announced with more dignity than Betty thought he possessed. She and Mrs. Peabody were listening nervously at the window, both afraid of what the quarrel might lead to. "You go pack our suitcases, Lieson, and I will figure up what he owes us. Never again do we work for a man who cheats."
Peabody leaned up against his post and chewed tobacco reflectively, while Wapley, tongue in cheek, struggled with a stub of pencil and a bit of brown wrapping paper.
"There's twenty-five dollars coming to us," he announced. "Twelve and a half apiece. Pay us, and we go."