“If you don’t want my flour,” roared Wull, fetching the counter a thwack with his white fist, “leave it be! ’Tis mine, isn’t it? I paid for it. I got it. There’s a law in this land, you pauper, that says so. There’s a law. Hear me? There’s a law, Mine, mine!” he cried, in a frenzy, lifting his lean arms. “What I got is mine. I’ll eat it,” he fumed, “or I’ll feed my pigs with it, or I’ll spill it for the fishes. They isn’t no law t’ make me sell t’ you. An’ you’ll pay what I’m askin’, or you’ll starve.”
“You wouldn’t do that, sir,” Jehoshaphat gently protested. “Oh no—no! Ah, now, you wouldn’t do that. You wouldn’t throw it t’ the fishes, would you? Not flour! ’Twould be a sinful waste.”
“Tis my right.”
“Ay,’ Mister Wull,” Jehoshaphat argued, with a little smile, “’tis yours, I’ll admit; but we been sort o’ dependin’ on you t’ lay in enough t’ get us through the winter.”
WUll’s response was instant and angry. “Get you out o’ my shop,” said he, “an’ come back with a civil tongue!”
“I’ll go, Mister Wull,” said Jehoshaphat, quietly, picking at a thread in his faded cap. “I’ll go. Ay, I’ll go. But—I got t’ have the flour. I—I—just got to. But I won’t pay,” he concluded, “no eighteen dollars a barrel.”
The trader laughed.
“For,” said Jehoshaphat, “’tisn’t right.”
Jehoshaphat went home without the flour, complaining of the injustice.