"Hi, there!—you with the breeches and the leggings,—ain't you got that order of mine ready yet?"
"It is all here waiting for you," I shouted back, striking a match on my much maligned breeches and lighting my briar pipe leisurely.
"Well,—why'n the devil don't you bring it aboard?"
"Why don't you come and fetch it?" I cried. "I'm a store-keeper, Mister Joe Clark,—not a delivery wagon. I sell f.o.b. the veranda." And I smoked on.
He jumped out of the boat and rushed up the beach like a madman. I sat still, smoking away dreamily, but with a weather eye on him.
He stood over me, rolled up his sleeves and contemplated me, then he turned and shouted to his man:
"Hi, Plumbago! Come on and lend a hand with this cargo. No use wasting any time on this tom-fool injun."
To say I was surprised, was to put it mildly, for I was sure a quarrel was about to be precipitated.
Joe Clark and his man set to, carrying the boxes, and bundles, and packages piecemeal from the veranda to the boat, while I smoked and smoked as if in complete ignorance of their presence.
I knew I was acting aggravatingly, but then, I had been very much aggravated.