"Oh!" The furrows were gone, the colorless face lighted up from within. "I understand now." She walked round the table and leaned over the dishes toward him and laughed. "Alfred," she tittered, "you certainly are the most goody-goody old poke of a stick that ever wore man's clothes, and you are blind, blind as a day-old kitten. You know men, all grades and styles of 'em, but you are a born fool when it comes to women. When that girl marries Jasper Long—I say, when Dixie Hart takes him, let me know, will you?" and she turned from the room, leaving him more than convinced that he didn't understand women, and certain that he never should try to do so again.
CHAPTER XXI
NE morning, in the early part of the following week, as Henley sat working at his desk in the store, and Pomp and Cahews were busy attending three or four elderly women in front, he became conscious that some one was speaking in loud, angry tones near the door. And, rising, that he might look over a stack of soap-boxes which obstructed his view, he saw that a dispute of some sort was taking place between Cahews and Hank Bradley over some cigars that the latter had failed to pay for on a former occasion. Bradley was evidently under the influence of liquor, and he began to swear loudly and threateningly. The women dropped the purchases they were making and shrank back farther into the store.
With a flush of anger over the insult to his house and customers, Henley strode hotly forward and thrust himself between the disputants.
"We'll talk about the account some other time," he said, glaring into Bradley's face. "But right now you get out of this house. You sha'n't stand here spouting vile oaths before these ladies."
"What have you got to do with it?" Bradley flared up in his turn, and he whipped his hand back toward his pistol-pocket, only to discover that he was not armed, as he evidently thought he was. However, he kept his hand behind him in a threatening attitude.
"I'll show you what I've got to do with it if you open your dirty jaws like that again!" Henley said, fearlessly. "You dare to draw a gun on me and I'll make you swallow your own teeth. Now, you get out of here!" And, taking him by the arm in a grip of steel, Henley drew him hurriedly to the door and shoved him down the steps.
"This ain't the end of it," Bradley threw back furiously. "You bet it ain't."