The bargaining instinct arose in the Deacon's mind, but he repressed it. He had no time to waste. He would make an offer that at home would be considered wildly extravagant, close the business at once and get back to Chattanooga. He said: "I'll give you a dollar apiece for five."
"Humph," said the woman contemptuously. "I don't sell them for no dollar apiece. They'uns 's all we got to live on now. If I sell 'em I must git somethin' that'll go jest as fur. You kin have 'em at $5 apiece."
"Betsy," remonstrated the old man, "I'm afeard this 's wrong, and as a Magistrate I shouldn't allow hit. Hit's traffickin' with the inemy."
"No, hit hain't," she asserted. "He's not a soljer. He's a citizen, and don't belong to the army. Besides, he's a Baptist, and hit hain't so bad as ef he wuz a Presbyterian, or a shoutin' Methodist. Most of all, I'm nearly dead for some coffee, and I know whar I kin git a pound o' rayle coffee for $10."
The Deacon had been pondering. To his thrifty mind it seemed like a waste to give a crisp, new $5 bill for such an insignificant thing as a chicken. Like Indiana farmers of his period, he regarded such things as chickens, eggs, butter, etc., as "too trifling for full-grown men to bother about. They were wholly women-folks' truck." He fingered the bills in his bosom, and thought how many bushels of wheat and pounds of pork they represented. Then he thought of Si in the hospital, and how a little chicken broth would build him up. Out came five new $5 bills.
"Here's your money," he said, thumbing over the bills clumsily and regretfully.
The old woman lowered her spectacles from the top of her head, and scrutinized them.
"What's them?" she asked suspiciously.