"Tush," said Mr. Price. "What are you trying to do, give me a bad name with my trade? People will think I'm a slave driver. Get out."

"In just a minute," smiled Patience.

"Go home, I say," almost shouted Price. He took off his alpaca coat and hung it on a nail. Then he stepped up suddenly behind Patience, took the pen deliberately from her hand and pushed her off the stool.

"Must I throw you out?" he demanded. "Must I? Must I, eh?"

He pointed towards the door.

"All right, Mr. Price," said Patience submissively, gathering up her bills and thrusting them into a drawer.

"Hurry," said Price. "You'll be late for your supper."

"No, I won't," returned Patience, putting on her jacket and hat. "This is wash day at our house. Supper is always late on wash day."

"Wash day, eh? Then you ought to be home helping your mother."

"Elsie will help mother," replied Patience quietly.

"Are you sure about that?" demanded Mr. Price.

"Of course, I'm sure, Mr. Price," said Patience, hurt.

"Well," said Mr. Price, "I'm not so sure. But don't stand here arguing. I haven't any time to argue with a snip of a girl like you. Get out. Go home!"

Patience, still a little hurt by her employer's expressed doubt about her sister, started for the front door. Looking out, she saw the overdressed young man with the automobile still standing across the street. He saw her, too, and waved his cigarette. Patience turned back into the store.

"Girl," demanded Mr. Price, his patience now seemingly exhausted, "where in the devil are you going?"

"Out the back way, if you please, Mr. Price."

Mr. Price got up deliberately from the stool which he had occupied as soon as Patience had vacated it and looked out of the front door.

"The young whelp," he said, apostrophizing the overdressed youth with the cigarette. Then to Patience: "Dodging him, eh? Now don't blush, girl. I don't blame him for looking at you. You're worth looking at. But you show mighty good sense in keeping away from him."

"Why, Mr. Price, I--" Patience stammered.

"O, that's all right, dodge him, keep him guessing. One of those freshies from the city, eh? Well, there's mighty little good in 'em. Give your ma my best regards. Tell her she's got a fine daughter. Good night."

Patience left the store by the rear door and started briskly for her home. She had gone but a block when she heard a wagon rumbling behind her and a voice called out:

"'Lo, there, Patience, late, ain't you?"

It was Harvey Spencer, ambitious "all round" clerk, hostler, collector for Millville's leading grocer. He drove a roan colt which went rather skittishly. There was an older man in the wagon with him. Harvey drew up the colt beside Patience with a vociferous "Whoa."

"Yes," replied Patience, "I'm a little late. Lots of business these days, Harvey?"

"You bet," he retorted, "Millville is flourishing. We'll soon have a real city here. Oh, Miss Welcome, let me make you acquainted with my friend, Mr. Michael Grogan of Chicago."

Patience accepted the introduction with flushed reserve.

"I'm right glad to know you," stated Mr. Grogan, removing his hat gallantly and wiping a perspiring brow with his handkerchief. "But let me tell you I don't think much of your friend, Harvey Spencer. Sure, I've been riding with him for two hours and you're the first pleasant object he's shown me. And such a ride! It's a certainty that this young fellow knows every b.u.mp and thank-ye-ma'am in the village and he's taken me full speed over all of them. I feel like I'd been churned. But I'll forgive him all that now--now that he's shown me you."

There was a sincerity in Mr. Grogan's raillery that swept away Patience's reserve. Besides, he was over fifty.

"Sure," she said, slyly imitating Mr. Grogan's brogue, "you've been kissing the blarney stone, Mr. Grogan."

"Will ye listen to that now?" said Grogan enthusiastically, as he started to clamber off the wagon.

"Sit still, Mr. Grogan," said Harvey, laughing.

"But didn't you hear her, man alive? Sure, she's Irish--"

"No, I'm not," put in Patience, "but I've heard of the blarney stone."

"Look at that, now," said Grogan, returning to his seat with an air of keen disappointment. "And I was just longin' to see someone from the Ould Sod. I thought--"

"How do you like riding with Harvey?" inquired Patience, changing the subject.

"Well," said Grogan plaintively, "if I were twenty years younger maybe it would be good exercise, but with my years, Miss, 'tis just plain exhausting."

Here Harvey started the roan colt off again. "See you later," he called back to Patience, "I'm stopping at your house."

"So that's Tom Welcome's daughter, is it?" said Grogan as they got out of hearing.

"That's one of them," said Harvey, "but you ought to see the other."

"The old man now," went on Grogan, "is a good deal of a lush."

"The girls can't help what their father is," retorted Harvey, bridling.

"I know, I know," went on Mr. Grogan. "Such things happen in the best of families."

"No, and you can't blame Tom Welcome much, either," went on Harvey. "He was drove to drink. He invented an electrical machine that would have made a fortune for him and some one stole it from him. It wasn't the loss of the money that sent him to the devil, either. He'd spent a lifetime on his machine and just when he was getting it patented, some smart thief in Chicago takes it away from him. That's what I call tough luck."

"They're hard up, you say?" pursued Grogan.

Harvey, unconscious that he had said nothing of the sort, admitted that the Welcomes were in financial straits. "Their mother has to take in washing," he said, "and both the girls work. It's too bad, for they ought to be getting an education."

The roan colt came to an abrupt stop. They were in front of a small cottage. Grogan surveyed the place for a moment and then turned to his jehu. "And what might you be stopping here for?" he inquired.

Harvey paused with one foot on the step of the wagon and looked up at Grogan gravely.

"This is Tom Welcome's cottage," he said.

CHAPTER III