“Well, I haven’t got anything in my store you want to buy,” I said, “unless it’s a nipple. And I’d advise you to buy that and go back home and tell your pa, if you have one, and let him make somebody buy you a wedding licence. Was that all you wanted?”
But she just stood there, not looking at me.
“I got the money to pay you,” she said.
“Is it your own, or did he act enough of a man to give you the money?”
“He give it to me. Ten dollars. He said that would be enough.”
“A thousand dollars wouldn’t be enough in my store and ten cents wouldn’t be enough,” I said. “You take my advice and go home and tell you pa or your brothers if you have any or the first man you come to in the road.”
But she didn’t move. “Lafe said I could get it at the drugstore. He said to tell you me and him wouldn’t never tell nobody you sold it to us.”
“And I just wish your precious Lafe had come for it himself; that’s what I wish. I don’t know: I’d have had a little respect for him then. And you can go back and tell him I said so—if he ain’t halfway to Texas by now, which I don’t doubt. Me, a respectable druggist, that’s kept store and raised a family and been a church-member for fifty-six years in this town. I’m a good mind to tell your folks myself, if I can just find who they are.”
She looked at me now, her eyes and face kind of blank again like when I first saw her through the window. “I didn’t know,” she said. “He told me I could get something at the drugstore. He said they might not want to sell it to me, but if I had ten dollars and told them I wouldn’t never tell nobody …”
“He never said this drugstore,” I said. “If he did or mentioned my name, I defy him to prove it. I defy him to repeat it or I’ll prosecute him to the