"Not that I ever knew on," says Miss Burgess, a pinning a pink bow on to a bonnet she was to work on, and a holding it out to see how it looked, "I raly don't know what you mean."
The 'pothecary begun to tremble all over, he was so tarnal mad to see her setting there as cool as a cucumber.
"You don't know what I mean, do you?" sez he. "Look a here, marm, haint I been to see you off and on for more than a year? Haint I footed up your books and made out bills and done all your out-door business, this ever so long? Haint I give you ounces on ounces of jujube paste, emptied a hull jar of lemon drops, and more than half kept you in pearl powder and cold cream?"
"Wal, you needn't talk so loud and tell everybody of it," sez the milliner a going on with her work all the time, but the leetle chap had got his grit up, and there was no "who" to him. On he went like a house afire.
"Wasn't it me that stopped you from taking them are darn'd Brandreth's pills. Didn't I tell you they warn't no better than rank pisin, and that no rale lady would ever think of stuffing herself with such humbug trash? I'll be choked if I don't wish I'd let you swaller fifty boxes of 'em—I wish I had—I do by gracious!"
"Don't make such a noise," sez the milliner, "it wont do no good, I can tell you."
"Wont it though? wont it? I rather guess you'll find out in the end. I'll sue you for a breach of promise—if I don't jest tell me on't, that's all."
The 'pothecary was a going on to say a good deal more, but jest as he begun to let off steam agin some customers come into the front shop. Miss Josephine Burgess put down her work and went out as if nothing on arth had happened. The 'pothecary waited a few minits a biling over with spite, and then he kicked a bonnet block across the room, upset a chair, and cut off through the store like all possessed. The milliner was a bargaining away with her customers for dear life—she looked up and larfed a little easy, as the poor feller sneaked through the store, and that was all she cared about it.
The poor coot of an apothecary went over to his shop and slammed the door tu hard enough to shake the house down. Then he went back of the counter, took down a jar full of corrosive supplement and poured some on it out in a tumbler, but somehow there was something in the thought of dying all of a sudden, that didn't exactly come up to his idee of comfort; so he poured back the pison and took a mint julep instead—that sort of cooled him down a trifle—so he made up his mind to put off drinking the pison till by-am-by.