When Miriam Rooney asked me if I would charge it up the same way as Stigler, I was on my guard at once. "I don't know what Stigler does at all," I said, with a smile.
"Well," said Miriam hesitatingly, "you see, Mr. Black, we use a lot of things up to the big house"—Mrs. Sturtevant was the wife of a very wealthy manufacturer in the neighborhood and kept up a large establishment—"and you might want to make it worth our while for us to buy from you. Mrs. Sturtevant said she'd as soon we'd buy from you as anywhere else."
"In other words, you want a rake-off—is that it?"
"Well," she said, evidently not liking the brutally frank way I put it, "it ought to be worth something to you to get all the business of the big house, hadn't it?"
"No," I said, desiring to get rid of the subject in the easiest way, "I can't afford to do so at the price I sell my goods, and there would be no benefit to me in doing business without a profit, would there?"
"Oh, you're soft," she said. "It needn't cost you anything."
I knew well enough what she meant. "But that would be making Mrs. Sturtevant pay more for the goods than they are worth."
"What d' you care, so long as she pays it?"
"I want Mrs. Sturtevant's business, young woman, but I'm hanged if I'm going to do any grafting to get it!"
"Keep your old things, then! If you're a fool, Stigler isn't!" And with that she bounced out of the store.