He was haggling for garden seeds.

William Berry, who was waiting upon him, did not apparently look at his sister and Rebecca Thayer, but Rebecca had entered his heart as well as the store, and he saw her face deep in his own consciousness.
Tommy Ray, the great white-headed boy who helped William in the store, shuffled along behind the counter indeterminately, but the girls did not seem to see him.

Rose was talking fast to Rebecca.

He lounged back against the shelves, stared out the door, and whistled.
Out of the obscurity in the back of the store an old man's narrow bristling face peered, watchful as a cat, his body hunched up in a round-backed arm-chair.
"Mr.Nims will go in a minute," Rose whispered, and presently the old farmer clamped past them out the door, counting his change from one hand to the other, his lips moving.
William Berry replaced the seed packages which the customer had rejected on the shelves as the girls approached him.
"Rebecca's got some eggs to sell," Rose announced.
[Illustration: "'Rebecca's got some eggs to sell'"] William Berry's thin, wide-shouldered figure towered up behind the counter; he smiled, and the smile was only a deepening of the pleasant intensity of his beardless face, with its high pale forehead and smooth crest of fair hair.

The lines in his face scarcely changed.
"How d'ye do ?" said he.
"How d'ye do ?" returned Rebecca, with fluttered dignity.