She started for the door, but the Colonel grasped her by the arm.
"Hold on, here!" he said, but Mrs. Tarbro-Smith merely raised her eyebrows and looked, first at his hand on her arm, and then at his face, and his hand fell. He stood irresolute and uncomfortable as she went to the door and called to Mr. Skinner. The butcher walked up to the door, clearing his throat as he came. Mrs. Smith held the screen door wide for him to enter, and he walked into the parlor, holding his hat in his hands, and stood uneasily.
"The Colonel," said Mrs. Smith pleasantly, "has told us you wish Miss Sally to return the money you paid for what she supposed were fire-extinguishers."
"They was nothin' but lung-testers," said the butcher.
"So it seems," said Mrs. Smith, "and it is odd that a man of business like yourself should not know it in the first place. But of course Miss Sally did not know what they were. Who told you they were fire-extinguishers, Sally?"
"The Colonel," said Miss Sally, and the Colonel moved his feet uneasily.
"Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Smith, giving the Colonel another of her paralyzing glances. "But Miss Sally will do whatever is right. She hasn't the money at this moment. You can wait until to-morrow for the sixty dollars, can you not, until she can see her father?"
The butcher grew red in the face, redder than his naturally high coloring, but he shook his head.
"I want it now," he said. "Business is business." And after a moment he added, "It wasn't sixty, it was one hundred. Four at twenty-five, that's one hundred. One hundred dollars, that was what I handed Guthrie. I paid one hundred and I want one hundred back."
Miss Sally and Mrs. Smith looked at the Colonel.
"I had a right to make a commission," he blustered. "I ain't no sich fool as to do business fer other folks an' lose time by it. I took out a commission, an' I had a right to, an' I don't want to hear no more about it. A commission's fair."
"You didn't say anything about it," said poor Miss Sally. "Mrs. Smith was just surprised to learn of it."
"Surprised, my dear?" said Mrs. Smith, "No, indeed. Nothing that man would do could quite surprise me. But forty percent commission! Miss Sally hasn't sixty dollars in the house," she added, turning to the butcher. "You know very well people here don't have so much in the house at one time. If I had it I would gladly lend it to her, but I don't happen to have so much with me to-day. You can wait until Mr. Briggs gets back from Clarence, or you can do what you please."