"We don't carry apples at this season," stolidly. "Berries is what we carry now, and early peaches."
"That so? Well, you're a peach, all right, all right. Well, Miss Flower, I expect I—" He was about to rise and make his adieux, when a look from Mary tingled through him to his toes; it said, "Stay!" He settled back in his seat. "I expect I'm ready for those other things you spoke of," he said slowly. "Scissors, was they, or knives?"
"Scissors!" said Mary. "I'll get them!"
She vanished. As the door closed behind her, the man made a step toward Pippin, and spoke low and savagely.
"You quit, do you hear? Quit and stay quit! If I catch you here again, I'll—" he indicated measures which would seriously incommode Pippin's internal economy.
"That so?" said Pippin in an easy drawl. He tilted his chair back on two legs, and smiled amiably at his interlocutor. "Why, Nosey, I'm sorry you feel that way. I never meant to spile it permanent, but it does seem to have got a kind of a twist, don't it? I wouldn't bear malice, though, if I was you!"
"—— —— you!" hissed the man. "I'll have your—"
The door opened; he dropped back against the table, and his face became once more a wooden mask.
Mary, her hands full of scissors, looked from one to the other; her breath came a little quickly, as if she had hurried. "You two gentlemen know each other?" she asked doubtfully.