Hasty pudding and molasses composed the morning meal for all. After breakfast, Mrs. Gaston took the two jackets, which had been out now five days, to the shop.
"Why, bless me, Mrs. Gaston, I thought you had run off with them jackets!" was Michael's coarse salutation as she came in.
The poor, heart-oppressed seamstress could not trust herself to reply, but laid her work upon the counter in silence. Berlaps, seeing her, came forward.
"These kind of doings will never answer, madam!" he said, angrily. "I could have sold both jackets ten times over, if they'd been here three days ago, as by rights they ought to have been. I can't give you work, if you are not more punctual. You needn't think to get along at our tack, unless you plug it in a little faster than all this comes to."
"I'll try and do better after this," said Mrs. Gaston, faintly.
"You'll have to, let me tell you, or we'll cry 'quits.' All my women must have nimble fingers."
"These jackets are not much to brag of," broke in Michael, as he tossed them aside. "I think we had better not trust her with any more cloth roundabouts. She has botched the button-holes awfully; and the jackets are not more than half pressed. Just look how she has held on the back seam of this one, and drawn the edges of the lappels until they set seven ways for Sunday! They're murdered outright, and ought to be hung up with a basin under them to catch the blood."
"What was she to have for them?" asked Berlaps.
"Thirty cents a-piece, I believe," replied the salesman.
"Don't give her but a quarter, then. I'm not going to pay full price to have my work botched up after that style!" And, so saying, Berlaps turned away and walked back to his desk.