A bitterness came upon Laurence. “What _I_ care?” he muttered. “I’ll _show_ you what I care!” However, his action seemed to deny his words, for instead of setting about some other business to prove his indifference, he slowly followed the shoppers. He was driven by a necessity he felt to make them comprehend his displeasure with their injurious flouting of himself and of etiquette in general. “Got ’ny politeness?” he muttered, and replied morosely: “No, they haven’t—they haven’t got sense enough to know what politeness means! Well, _I’ll_ show ’em! They’ll _see_ before _I_ get through with ’em! _Oh_, oh! Jus’ wait a little: they’ll be beggin’ me quick enough to speak to ’em. ‘Oh, Laur-runce, _please_!’ they’ll say. ‘_Please_ speak to us, Laur-runce. Won’ chu _please_ speak to us, Laurunce? We’d jus’ give _anything_ to have you speak to us, Laurunce! Won’ chu, Laurunce, pull-_lease_?’ Then I’ll say: ‘_Yes_, I’ll speak to you, an’ you better listen if you want to learn some sense!’ Then I’ll call ’em everything I can think of!” It might have been supposed that he had some definite plan for bringing them thus to their knees in supplication, but he was only solacing himself by sketching a triumphant climax founded upon nothing. Meanwhile he continued morbidly to follow, keeping about fifty yards behind them. “Poot!” he sneered. “Think they’re wunnaful, don’t they? You wait! They’ll see!” He came to a halt, staring. “_Now_ what they doin’?” Elsie and Daisy had gone into a small drug-store, where Daisy straightway approached the person in charge, an elderly man of weary appearance. “Do you keep taffeta?” she asked importantly. Since she and her friend were “playing” that they were shopping, of course they found it easily consistent to “play” that the druggist was a clerk in a department store; and no doubt, too, the puzzlement of the elderly man gave them a profound if secret enjoyment. He moved toward his rather shabby soda-fountain, replying: “I got chocolate and strawb’ry and v’nilla. I don’t keep no fancy syrups.” “Oh, my, no!” Daisy exclaimed pettishly. “I mean taffeta you wear.” “What?” “I mean taffeta you wear.” “‘Wear’?” he said. “I want to look at some _taffeta_,” Daisy said impatiently. “_Taffeta._” “Taffy?” the man said. “I don’t keep no line of candies.” Daisy frowned, and shook her head. “I guess he’s kind of deaf or somep’m,” she said to Elsie; and then she shouted again at the elderly man: “Taffe_tah_! It’s somep’m you _wear_. You wear it _on_ you!” “What for?” he said. “I ain’t deaf. You mean some brand of porous plaster? Mustard plaster?” “Oh, my, _no_!” Daisy exclaimed, and turned to Elsie. “This is just the way it is. Whenever I go shopping, they’re _always_ out of everything I want!” “Oh, it’s exackly the same with me, my dear,” Elsie returned. “It’s too provoking! Rilly, the shops in this town——”