Part 23 (1/2)

”You forget you are speaking of my aunt, Mr. Barnes.”

”I guess I did forget it a mite, Miss Lucy,” mumbled Elias awkwardly. ”I beg your pardon.”

The girl inclined her head.

”Suppose we leave personal matters now and settle our business,” she answered, motioning toward the boxes, baskets, and egg cases Tony had set inside the shop door. ”Here is the corn and the b.u.t.ter my aunt promised you, and here are twelve dozen eggs. If you will pay me for them, I will start back home before it grows any warmer.”

”Lemme see,” ruminated Elias, ”eggs is bringing----”

”Seventy cents.”

”Ain't it sixty-nine?”

”No.”

”I seem to have sixty-nine fixed awful firm in my head,” protested Elias tenaciously.

Lucy laughed.

”You'll have to get it out then,” she retorted good-humoredly, ”for seventy cents is the market price.”

The firm answer told the shopkeeper that further bickering would be useless.

”Seventy cents then,” he said reluctantly, opening his cash drawer. ”It's robbery, though.”

”You're not often robbed, Mr. Barnes.”

”Ain't I? Well, if I ain't, it's 'cause folks know better than to try to do me. 'Tain't often I'm beat in a bargain--only when I'm dealin' with a pretty woman an' give her the advantage.” Again he displayed his rows of teeth. ”Ladies first is my motto; an' heiresses----”

”You haven't paid me for the corn or b.u.t.ter yet,” cut in Lucy impatiently.

”Five dozen ears of early corn and ten pounds of print b.u.t.ter.”

For a second time Elias took from an infinitesimal crack in his money drawer another handful of change which he grudgingly counted into the girl's extended hand.

”There you are!” he a.s.serted, as if wiping some disagreeable thought triumphantly from his memory. ”Now we're square an' can talk of somethin'

else.”

”I'm afraid I can't stop to talk to-day, Mr. Barnes, for I've got to get home. Good-by and thank you,” and with a smile that dazzled the confounded storekeeper, Lucy sped out the door.

Elias, who was a widower and ”well-to-do,” was considered the catch of the town and was therefore unaccustomed to receiving such scant appreciation of his advances.

”I'll be b.u.t.tered!” he declared, chagrined. ”If she ain't gone!”

Lucy was indeed far down the level road, laughing to herself as she thought of the discomfited Elias. This was not the first time he had shown an inclination to force his oily pleasantries upon her; but it was the first time she had so pointedly snubbed him.

”I hope it will do him good,” she murmured half aloud. ”I'd like to convince him that every woman in Sefton Falls isn't his for the asking.”

As she went on her way between the bordering tangle of goldenrod and scarlet-tinted sumach, she was still smiling quietly. The sun had risen higher, and a dry heat rose in waves from the earth. Already her shoes were white, and moist tendrils of hair curled about her brow. Before her loomed three miles of parching highway as barren of shade as the woodsman's axe could make it. The picture of Ellen's cool kitchen and breezy porch made the distance at that moment seem interminable. There was not a wagon in sight, and unless one came along, she would have to trudge every step of the way home.