She got a cloth and began to wipe up the unsightly mass at her feet.
“I paid sixty-seven cents for those,” Lucy said.
“Sixty-seven cents! How long have the Howes been gettin’ sixty-seven cents for their eggs, I’d like to know?” Ellen demanded, springing into an upright position.
“I couldn’t say. Jane told me that was the regular market price.”
“Why didn’t I know it?” her aunt burst out. “They must ’a’ gone up a cent, an’ I sellin’ mine at the store for sixty-six! Ain’t it just like that meachin’ Elias Barnes to do me out of a penny a dozen, the skinflint.”
In the face of the present issue, the battle between Howe and Webster was forgotten.
To be cheated out of a cent by Elias Barnes and at the same time to have her business 80 ability surpassed by that of Martin Howe! No indignity could have equaled it.
“Well, I’ll get even with Elias,” she blustered. “I’m fattening some hogs for him, an’ I’ll tuck what I’ve lost on the eggs right on to ’em. He shall pay that cent one way or ’nother ’fore he gets through. He needs to think to beat me. Sixty-seven cents, and I never knowin’ it!”
Then the words brought still another bitter possibility to the woman’s mind.
“You didn’t mention to the Howes I was gettin’ only sixty-six cents a dozen for eggs, did you?” she asked, wheeling on Lucy.