"Indeed, Mr. Dibble? Let me make a suggestion then. You should take time, build a flying machine and make money. Then you would n't have to bother me for mine."
As Dabble stood for a moment quite disconcerted by the poet's remarkable advice, Buster, with exquisite care that no noise should be made to frustrate his design, extracted two of the full bottles from the deserted basket, and with equal caution replaced them with two of the empty ones he had set out preparatory to offering them for sale in the neighborhood.
So carefully did Buster execute this manoeuvre, that the attention of neither the clerk nor Moore was attracted to his performance, which was successfully repeated by the lad until only one full bottle remained in the basket, this being left deliberately for a certain purpose, not because the opportunity to purloin it had not been afforded him.
"Do you intend to pay this bill, sir?" demanded Dabble, waking up to the fact that he had been made fun of, and waxing angry accordingly.
"Certainly I intend to pay it, Mr. Dibble," said Moore impatiently.
"To-day?"
"No, I never pay bills on Tuesday."
"What day do you pay them on?"
"I usually liquidate all indebtedness on the twenty-ninth of February. If you will call around then I will be pleased to settle and may perhaps give you another order. Now you really must excuse me, as I am obliged to finish this sonnet without further delay."
"February is too far off," objected the clerk, not comprehending the space of time that must necessarily elapse before the date mentioned by Moore would be reached by the calendar, for this was not a leap-year.