“Yes, I need a new fall suit, and Cliff has got to have one, too; how will this do for him?” and the man passed the shoddy up to her.
“Humph! you might shoot peas through it,” she said, with a scornful sniff, and using the same expression as when she had examined the cloths by herself.
“Not as bad as that, I reckon; but it will have to do for him,” said the man coldly. “This is better goods, and I think I’ll have my suit made from it. What do you think of it?” and he held it out to her.
There was a bright spot of red on the woman’s cheeks and a resentful gleam in her eyes as she took it.
“This is something like, but t’other ain’t worth the thread ’twould take to make it up,” she said, with considerable asperity.
“It will have to do,” was the curt response, and the man resumed his interrupted supper, while the housekeeper vanished into the kitchen.
She threw herself into a rocker and began swaying herself back and forth with more energy than grace, muttering now and then, and nodding her head angrily in the direction of the dining-room door. She continued this until the squire rang his bell to signify that he had finished his meal, when she returned to the other room and began to gather up the dishes.
Suddenly she paused, as her glance fell upon the two samples, that still lay beside the squire’s plate, he having forgotten to take them when he arose from the table.
“It’s a pesky shame!” she muttered indignantly. “He hain’t a soul in the world but himself to spend his money on, and he’s got a tarnel sight more’n he knows what to do with. I sh’d think he’d be ashamed to give the boy a suit like that.”
She picked up the samples and fingered them nervously. Then she noticed that a tag bearing a printed number was pinned to each. These numbers corresponded to those on the list that had been sent with the samples, and against each of which the price of the goods was carried out, but this list the squire had tossed into the waste-basket with the discarded samples.