“I’ll have to ask you to add that to our bill,” said the girl, flushing. “Mother is short of money just now.”
“Wait a moment, Miss Jess; I’ll speak to Mr. Closewick,” said the clerk, seemingly as much embarrassed as the girl herself, and he stepped hastily toward the glass-enclosed office at the rear of the store.
But the pursy old man with the double chin and spectacles on his forehead, the height of which the wisp of reddish-gray hair could not hide, had observed it all. He got down ponderously from his stool and squeaked out behind the long counter in his shiny boots.
“I sent my bill over to your mother this morning, Miss Jess,” he said. “It is more than twenty dollars without this list of goods to-night,” and he shook the modest little paper in his hand, having taken it from the clerk.
“Mother is short of money just now,” repeated Jess.
“So’m I. You tell her so. I can’t let you increase your indebtedness,” and his pudgy hand lifted the basket and put it on the shelf behind him.
“You pay me something on account, or pay for these goods you’ve ordered this evening. I’m needing money, too.”
“Mr. Closewick! I hope you won’t do that,” gasped Jess, paling under his stern glance. “We will pay you—we always have. Mother sometimes has to wait for her money—a long time. We spend many a twenty-dollar bill in your store during the year——”
“That ain’t neither here nor there,” said the grocer, ponderously. “It’s a rule I have. Never let a bill run more than twenty dollars. ’Specially where there’s no man in the family. Hard to collect from a woman. Makes me bad friends if I press ’em. I can afford to risk losing twenty dollars; but no more!”
“How can you!” cried Jess, under her breath, for there was somebody else entering the store. “We have bought of you for years——”
“And if I hadn’t stuck to the few business rules I have, I wouldn’t have been here selling you goods for years,” returned Mr. Closewick, grimly. “The sheriff would have sold me out. I’m sorry for your mother, and I don’t want to lose her trade. But business is business.”
“And you cannot favor us for this single occasion?” choked Jess.
“It would lead to others; I can’t break a rule,” said the grocer, stubbornly. “Come now, Miss Jess! You go home and tell your mother how it is. I’ll keep this basket right here for you, and you come back with the two-seven, and it will be all right.”