"I want the money," said Skinner doggedly.
"Very well," said Mrs. Smith. "Collect forty from the Colonel. That will keep you from starving until to-morrow. And now will you both kindly leave the house?"
"Now, look here, Mrs. Smith, ma'm," said the butcher. "You ain't got any right to talk that way to me. Money matters is money matters, and a man has a right to look after his own the best way he can. I was cheated out of one hundred dollars by this man and Miss Sally, as easy as you please, and there's bribery in it, and land knows what. But I ain't mean. All I want is my money back, and I want it now. I hear T. J. Jones is going to get out an extry to-morrow morning all about this, and all I want is to do what is right. Hand me back my hundred dollars, and I'll go to T. J. and explain that Miss Sally did what was right, and tell him to leave her out of what he writes, but if I don't get the money I won't say a word to him. He can guess all he wants about Miss Sally and the Colonel being in cahoots with this bribe business. All I want is my money."
"But I say you shall have it in the morning."
"Well, I don't count much on what you'll get out of Pap Briggs. You might get ten cents, if he was feeling liberal, but he don't usually feel that way. What I want is one hundred dollars right now. I don't need no lung-testers, and I've been cheated, and I won't wait. If Miss Sally ain't going to pay me, I'll see what the law says about it."
"Mr. Skinner," said Mrs. Smith, "in consideration that Miss Sally is a lady and that you are a gentleman, will you not wait till to-morrow?"
"Business is business," he said flatly. "When I'm sellin' meat I ain't a gentleman, I'm a butcher; and when Miss Briggs was sellin' lung-testers she wasn't a lady, she was in business. Business is one thing an' bein' pleasant is another. I've got to look after my money or I soon won't have any."
When the two men went out Mrs. Smith could hear them begin to wrangle even before they quitted the yard, but she was more interested in what might happen to Miss Sally through the vindictiveness of the butcher. She was surprised to hear that T. J. Jones had even thought of such a thing as bringing Miss Sally's name into the matter as a conspirator, and she did not know enough about Iowa laws to know whether the butcher could take any summary action or not. The most satisfactory way to straighten things out would be to pay the butcher, but it must be done at once. She pleaded with Miss Sally to remember someone of whom she could borrow sixty dollars, but Miss Sally confessed that she knew no one who would be apt to lend so much. She even expressed her doubt that her father would ever release the money she had given him. The two women sat in the darkened parlor, Miss Sally weeping softly and Mrs. Smith thinking hard. The authoress was ashamed that she could devise no way to aid her friend, and there they sat, exchanging a brief word from time to time, and the gloom deepening every minute. Presently, when the atmosphere was so charged with sadness that it was almost too thick to breathe, Mrs. Smith called to Susan, and the girl came in.