accounts were kept with an accuracy which struck us, who dealt at the
store, as ignobly practical, and even malignant. Possibly we might have
expressed this opinion more strongly but for a certain rude vigor of
repartee which he possessed, and a suggestion that he might have a
temper on occasion. "Them red-haired chaps is like to be tetchy and
to kinder see blood through their eyelashes," had been suggested by an
observing customer.
In short, little as we knew of the youngest Miss Piper, he was the last
man we should have suspected her to select as an admirer. What we did
know of their public relations, purely commercial ones, implied the
reverse of any cordial understanding. The provisioning of the Piper
household was entrusted to Del, with other practical odds and ends of
housekeeping, not ornamental, and the following is said to be a truthful
record of one of their overheard interviews at the store:--
The youngest Miss Piper, entering, displacing a quantity of goods in the
centre to make a sideways seat for herself, and looking around loftily
as she took a memorandum-book and pencil from her pocket.
"Ahem! If I ain't taking you away from your studies, Mr. Sparrell,
maybe you'll be good enough to look here a minit;--but" (in affected
politeness) "if I'm disturbing you I can come another time."
Sparrell, placing the book he had been reading carefully under the
counter, and advancing to Miss Delaware with a complete ignoring of her
irony: "What can we do for you to-day, Miss Piper?"
Miss Delaware, with great suavity of manner, examining her
memorandum-book: "I suppose it wouldn't be shocking your delicate
feelings too much to inform you that the canned lobster and oysters you
sent us yesterday wasn't fit for hogs?"
Sparrell (blandly): "They weren't intended for them, Miss Piper. If
we had known you were having company over from Red Gulch to dinner, we
might have provided something more suitable for them. We have a fair
quality of oil-cake and corn-cobs in stock, at reduced figures. But the
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