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Beatrice's expression changed. "What are you goin' to do to him?"

"I'll mop up his drug store with him!" Abner leaned over his plate, dropped the shreds of chewed bone on it.

Beatrice watched him apprehensively. "Look here, Abner, they ain't no use fightin' about it. Besides, he's so little you could lick him with one finger. That's what I don't like about him; he's so little and puny. One night I ast him did he ever gamble or git drunk. He got so serious; he said, 'Miss Beatrice, upon my honour, I never did.' I thought, 'You little sissy!'"

Abner got up and pushed his chair from the table with a backward motion of his knees.

"Where you goin'?"

"To see Pratt."

"No, you don't," protested Beatrice. "You let Sim Pratt alone. I can manage my own affairs."

At this moment Mrs. Sandage entered the dining room.

"What's this about Mr. Pratt?" she asked suspiciously.

"He was tryin' to hug her last night!" snapped Abner.

"You permitted it, B'atrice Sandage!"

"Naw!" cried Beatrice at this new outrage. "I was tellin' Abner to leave him be!"

"He ortn't to be left be! Abner ort to settle with him!"

"Oh, Mammy, you're so countrified! Adelaide says as long as a girl can breathe she don't need protection."

Abner left the two in the midst of a quarrel, with the maid Aline standing to one side with down-drawn lips and lifted brows.

Abner Teeftallow set out for the drug store. He was irritated at Pratt for the brotherly reason that he could not sympathize with the drug clerk in his desire to caress Beatrice Belle; therefore he would put the young man in his place.

Then the lawsuit and Jim's money, Adelaide Jones and Buck Sharp, all drifted through his mind, each bearing its own savour of gall. He sighed heavily. He certainly had got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.