She began to feel a little hysterical. It was a funny question! No wonder the old woman answered her crossly. Have you any sweetbreads? How many times had she asked it? She thought of the game the children played—Black sheep, black sheep, have you any wool? And what on earth should she get in place of sweetbreads? Raymond was so difficult about his food. He had such a tiny and pernickety appetite . . .
By wriggling, she gained the curb before another cart.
“Have you any sweetbreads?”
No one paid her the slightest heed. The centre of the stage was held by a tall, spare woman with a stridulous voice. Marjorie knew her slightly. Two weeks ago she had called—not as people called at home, in Pinto Plains—but sternly and coldly, neither giving nor receiving pleasure by the visit, save when she had laid three bits of pasteboard on the corner of the table and left the house. Mrs. Pratt was the wife of a cheerfully ineffectual professional man with political aspirations, and she felt her position keenly. So did Marjorie; and she backed away while summoning her courage to speak.
“A dollar and a half?” Mrs. Pratt was saying. “Outrageous! I can’t think what you people are coming to! I’ll give you a dollar and a quarter, and not one penny more.” She indicated a pair of frozen chickens, each with a large mauve face, that lay exposed on an old red blanket.
“Can’t do it, lady,” said the farmer, with chattering teeth, “it cost me mor’n that to feed them this three year,” and he winked heavily at the surrounding circle.
“Oh, they’re fowl! Well then, of course, they’re not worth that much! There’s a woman across the road,”—Mrs. Pratt swept her muff vaguely towards the horizon and unconsciously disarranged Marjorie’s hat,—“who is selling her fowl for eighty cents!”
“I’ll take them,” cried a woman at this juncture. “It’s too cold to haggle over a few cents. Giv’um to me!” She thrust a dollar and a half into the man’s hand, seized the chickens and started off.
“Those are mine!” called Mrs. Pratt, in a tone that rivalled the sharpness of the atmosphere.
“You take the others at eighty cents,” returned the woman, amid a ripple of laughter.