“Father, I told her I’d giver her two and a half pounds for two dozen,” said William; he was quite pale.  He began counting the eggs over again, and his hands trembled.

“I’ll take just what you’re willing to give,” Rebecca said to Silas.

“Sugar is fourteen cents a pound, an’ eggs is fetchin’ ten cents a dozen,” said the old man; “you can have a pound and a half of sugar for them eggs if you can give me a cent to boot.”

Rebecca colored.  “I’m afraid I haven’t got a cent with me,” said she; “I didn’t fetch my purse.  You’ll have to give me a cent’s worth less sugar, Mr. Berry.”

“It’s kinder hard to calkilate so close as that,” returned Silas, gravely; “you had better tell your mother about it, an’ you come back with the cent by-an’-by.”

“Why, father!” cried Rose.

William shouldered his father aside with a sudden motion.  “I’m tending to this, father,” he said, in a stern whisper; “you leave it alone.”

“I ain’t goin’ to stan’ by an’ see you givin’ twice as much for eggs as they’re worth ‘cause it’s a gal you’re tradin’ with.  That wa’n’t never my way of doin’ business, an’ I ain’t goin’ to have it done in my store.  I shouldn’t have laid up a cent if I’d managed any such ways, an’ I ain’t goin’ to see my hard earnin’s wasted by you.  You give her a pound and a half of sugar for them eggs and a cent to boot.”

“You sha’n’t lose anything by it, father,” said William, fiercely.  “You leave me alone.”

The sugar-barrel stood quite near.  William strode over to it, and plunged in the great scoop with a grating noise.  He heaped it recklessly on some paper, and laid it on the steelyards.

“Don’t give me more’n a pound and a half,” Rebecca said, softly.

“Keep still,” Rose whispered in her ear.

Silas pushed forward, and bent over the steelyards.  “You’ve weighed out nigh three,” he began.  Then his son’s face suddenly confronted his, and he stopped talking and stood back.

Almost involuntarily at times Silas Berry yielded to the combination of mental and superior physical force in his son.  While his own mind had lost nothing of its vigor, his bodily weakness made him distrustful of it sometimes, when his son towered over him in what seemed the might of his own lost strength and youth, brandishing his own old weapons.

William tied up the sugar neatly; then he took the eggs from Rebecca’s basket, and put the parcel in their place.  Silas began lifting the eggs from the box in which William had put them, and counted them eagerly.

“There ain’t but twenty-three eggs here,” he called out, as Rebecca and Rose turned away, and William was edging after them from behind the counter.

“I thought there were two dozen,” Rebecca responded, in a distressed voice.

“Of course there are two dozen,” said Rose, promptly.  “You ’ain’t counted ’em right, father.  Go along, Rebecca; it’s all right.”