“Tramps, I dare say,” said the widow. “You 're that shiftless you'd give the shoes off your feet and the food out of your mouth to feed any good-for-nothing that come camping on you. You don't get my good eggs to feed such trash, Peter Lane! Winter eggs are worth money.”
“I thought to pay for them,” said Peter meekly. “I wouldn't ask them of you any other way, Mrs. Potter.”
“Well, if you 've got the money I suppose I've got to let you have them,” said the widow grudgingly. “Eggs is worth three cents apiece, and I hate to have 'em fed to tramps. How many do you want to buy?” Peter shifted from one foot to another uncomfortably. “Well, now, I'm what you might call a little short of ready money tonight,” he said. “I thought maybe I might come over and saw some wood for you tomorrow—”
“And so you can,” said Mrs. Potter promptly, “and when the wood is sawed they will be paid for, in eggs or money, and not until it is sawed. I'm not going to encourage you to run into debt. You 're shiftless enough now, goodness knows.”
Peter tried to smile and ignored the accusation.
“There couldn't be anything fairer than that,” he said. “Nobody ought to object to that sort of arrangement at all. That's real business-like. Only, there's a small boy amongst the company that dropped in on me and he's only about so high—” Peter showed a height that would have been small for an infant dwarf. “He's a real nice little fellow, and if you was ever a boy that high, and crying because you wanted something to eat—”
“I don't believe a word of it!” snapped Mrs. Potter. “If there is a child down there he ought to be in bed long ago.”
“Yes'm,” agreed Peter meekly. “That's so. You wouldn't put even a dog that size to bed hungry. So, if you could let me have about half-a-dozen eggs, I'll go right back.”
“Six eggs at three cents is eighteen cents,” said Mrs. Potter firmly, looking Peter directly in the eye. She was not bad looking. Her cheek bones were rather high and prominent and her cheeks hollow, and she had a strong chin for a woman, but the downward twist of discouragement that had marked her mouth during her later married years had already disappeared, giving place to a firmness that told she was well able to manage her own affairs. Peter drew his alarm-clock from beneath his coat and stood it on the kitchen table.
“I brought along this alarm-clock,” he said, “so you'd know I'd come back like I say I will. She's a real good clock. I paid eighty cents for her when she was new, and I just fixed her up fresh to-day. She's running quite—quite a little, since I fixed her.”