"Very well, I won't trouble you again in a hurry."
"That is as you please, sir," said the bookseller, and no reply followed.
"That's Mr. Worboise," said Mattie, "I wish father wouldn't be so hard upon him."
"I don't like that young man," said Kitely, reëntering. "My opinion is that he's a humbug."
"Miss Burton does not think so," said Mattie, quietly.
"Eh, what, princess?" said her father. "Eh! ah! well! well!"
"You don't give credit, Mr. Kitely?" said the tailor.
"No, not to my own father. I don't know, though, if I had the old boy back again, now he's dead. I didn't behave over well to him, I'm afraid. I wonder if he's in the moon, or where he is, Mr. Spelt, eh? I should like to believe in God now, if it were only for the chance of saying to my father, 'I'm sorry I said so-and-so to you, old man.' Do you think he'll have got over it by this time, Spelt? You know all about those things. But I won't have a book engaged and left and not paid for. I'd rather give credit and lose it, and have done with it. If young Worboise wants the book he may come for it to-morrow."
"He always pays me—and pleasantly," said Spelt.