"Three dollars! You'll be afther thinkin' we're made of money, sure!
I'll give you a dollar and a half."

"No, ma'am, we don't trade in that way. We don't very often take half
what we ask for an article."

"Mike," said she, "pull off yer coat an' thry it on. Three dollars, and
it looks as if it was all cotton."

"Not a thread of cotton in that," was the clerk's reply.

"Not wan, but a good many, I'm thinkin'," retorted the Irish lady, as
she helped her husband draw on the coat. It fitted tolerably well and
Mike seemed mightily pleased with his transformation.

"Come," said the wife. "What will ye take?"

"As it's you, I'll take off twenty-five cents," replied the clerk.

"And sell it to me for two dollars?" inquired his customer, who had good
cause for her inaccurate arithmetic.

"For two dollars and seventy-five cents."

"Two dollars and seventy-five cents! It's taking the bread out of the
childer's mouths you'd have us, paying such a price as that! I'll give
you two twenty-five, an' I'll be coming again some time."

"We couldn't take so low as two twenty-five, ma'am. You may have it for
two dollars and a half."