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 "Where's the change?" Peck demanded, leaning toward Tippie across the table, his frog eyes starting as if he had a potato in his gullet.

Tippie got up with a bored, pained air, went to the stove, scratched a match, lit his pipe. It was all a pantomime of the utmost disdain, the most lofty contempt. He said nothing; he did not even waste a glance at Peck, who held his waiting pose of demand, long neck stretched across the table as far as it would go, which was no inconsiderable distance. Tippie started for the door, trailing smoke, Rawlins following.

Mrs. Peck's red face grew a shade redder; her big black eyebrows pinched together, running a crease down her fat nose. She didn't like Tippie's attitude of contempt for the specimen of civilization she had taken to her bosom. Peck was quick to see this; his hauteur increased as his courage came a little farther out of the hole.

"Where's the change, I said?" Peck repeated, beating time to the demand with the flat of his hand on the table.

"I ain't accountable to you," Tippie replied loftily, still making his streak of smoke toward the door.

"That's where you're off!" Peck declared, his severity insolently overbearing. "I'm the lawful and legal head of this fam'ly. I want them figgers, I want to know how much you paid out and where the balance of that money is. That's what I want to know."

Tippie was standing with his hand on the doorknob, Rawlins at his heels. At this insolent challenge to his business methods, if not his honesty and honor,