"Well, then, say twenty-five; from twenty-five take thirteen—"
"I tell you, 'tain't a bit of use your taking away thirteen at that rate," interrupted Jones, rather warmly.
"And what will you give, then?" asked the old man, with a sort of screech.
"Why, nothing!" impatiently replied Jones. "Who ever said I would give anything? I didn't—did I?"
"Then what do you come creeping and crawling about the place for?" hissed the old man, his one eye glaring defiance on Jones, "eh! just tell me that. Why, these two months you've crept and crept, and crawled, and crawled, till you've sent the rag and bottle people away. 'Sir,' says the rag and bottle woman to me, 'Sir, we can't stand it no longer. There's a man, Sir, and he prowls around the shop. Sir, and he jist looks in, and darts off agin, and he won't buy no rags, and he hasn't no bottles to sell; and my husband and me, Sir, we can't stand it—that's all.' Well, and what have you got to say to that, I should like to know?"
Jones, who never had a very ready tongue, and who was quite confounded at the accusation, remained dumb.
"I'll tell you what you are, though," cried the old man, his voice rising still higher with his wrath; "you are a crawling, creeping, low, sneaking fellow!"
"Now, old gentleman!" cried Jones, in his turn losing his temper, "just keep a civil tongue in your head, will you? I didn't ask to come in, did I? And if I did look at the shop at times, why, a cat can look at a king, can't he?"
Spite of the excellence of the reasoning thus popularly expressed, Jones perceived that the old man was going to renew his offensive language, and as he wisely mistrusted his own somewhat hasty temper, he prudently walked downstairs, and let himself out. But then he reached the street, the old man's head was already out of the first-floor window, and Jones turned the corner pursued with the words "creeping," "crawling." He lost the rest.