to-night,
when Miss Sally can see her father."

"No, I can't," said the Colonel doggedly. "I can't wait at all. By
to-morrow mornin' that newspaper feller will have another paper printed
up, an' I hear tell he's goin' to give us all plain names, an' I ain't
goin' to wait. I want to git this thing fixed up right now. If Sally
ain't got sixty dollars, let her go borry it. I got to pay Skinner right
now, an' I want Sally to pay me. I want to git shut of this."

"I don't believe Mr. Skinner is in any such hurry as you pretend!"
exclaimed Mrs. Smith. "I don't believe he is so ungenerous. I believe he
is more chivalrous, I believe HE will have some manliness, if you have
not."

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 n