“I don't believe Mr. Skinner is in any such hurry as you pretend!” exclaimed Mrs. Smith. “I don't believe he is so ungenerous. I believe he is more chivalrous, I believe HE will have some manliness, if you have not.”
She started for the door, but the Colonel grasped her by the arm.
“Hold on, here!” he said, but Mrs. Tarbro-Smith merely raised her eyebrows and looked, first at his hand on her arm, and then at his face, and his hand fell. He stood irresolute and uncomfortable as she went to the door and called to Mr. Skinner. The butcher walked up to the door, clearing his throat as he came. Mrs. Smith held the screen door wide for him to enter, and he walked into the parlor, holding his hat in his hands, and stood uneasily.
“The Colonel,” said Mrs. Smith pleasantly, “has told us you wish Miss Sally to return the money you paid for what she supposed were fire-extinguishers.”
“They was nothin' but lung-testers,” said the butcher.
“So it seems,” said Mrs. Smith, “and it is odd that a man of business like yourself should not know it in the first place. But of course Miss Sally did not know what they were. Who told you they were fire-extinguishers, Sally?”
“The Colonel,” said Miss Sally, and the Colonel moved his feet uneasily.
“Indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Smith, giving the Colonel another of her paralyzing glances. “But Miss Sally will do whatever is right. She hasn't the money at this moment. You can wait until to-morrow for the sixty dollars, can you not, until she can see her father?”
The butcher grew red in the face, redder than his naturally high coloring, but he shook his head.
“I want it now,” he said. “Business is business.” And after a moment he added, “It wasn't sixty, it was one hundred. Four at twenty-five, that's one hundred. One hundred dollars, that was what I handed Guthrie. I paid one hundred and I want one hundred back.”