"If it's business, we eat. If it's pleasure, you've stopped at the wrong
cigar counter."

"I knowed I was goin' to take to you," said Scattergood. "You got
capable hair.... This here was to be business."

"Twelve o'clock sharp, then," she said.

He looked at the clock. It lacked half an hour of noon.

"G'-by," he said, and went to a distant corner, where he seated himself
and stared out of the window, trying to imagine what he would do if he
were Ovid Nixon, and what would make him appropriate three thousand
dollars.... At twelve o'clock he lumbered over to the cigar case. "C'm
on," he said. "Hain't got no time to waste."

The girl put on her hat and they walked out together.

"What's your name?" Scattergood asked.

"Pansy O'Toole.... You're Scattergood Baines--that's why I'm here.... I
don't eat with every man that oozes out of the woods."

Scattergood said nothing. It was a fixed principle of his to let other
folks do the talking if they would. If not he talked himself--deviously.
Seldom did he ask a direct question regarding any matter of importance,
and so strong was habit that it was rare for him to put any query
directly. If he wanted to know what time it was he would lead up to the
subject by mentioning sun dials, or calendars, or lunar eclipses, and so
approach circuitously and by degrees, until his victim was led to