"What can I do for you?" I said.
Still she didn't say anything.
She stared at me without winking.
Then she looked back at the folks at the fountain.
Then she looked past me, toward the back of the store.
"Do you want to look at some toilet things?" I said. "Or is it medicine you want?"
"That's it," she said.
She looked quick back at the fountain again.
So I thought maybe her ma or somebody had sent her in for some of this female dope and she was ashamed to ask for it.
I knew she couldn't have a complexion like hers and use it herself, let alone not being much more than old enough to barely know what it was for.
It's a shame, the way they poison themselves with it.
But a man's got to stock it or go out of business in this country.
"Oh," I said.
"What do you use?
We have—" She looked at me again, almost like she had said hush, and looked toward the back of the store again.
"I'd liefer go back there," she said.
"All right," I said.
You have to humor them.
You save time by it.
I followed her to the back.
She put her hand on the gate.
"There's nothing back there but the prescription case," I said.
"What do you want?"
She stopped and looked at me.
It was like she had taken some kind of a lid off her face, her eyes.
It was her eyes: kind of dumb and hopeful and sullenly willing to be disappointed all at the same time.
But she was in trouble of some sort; I could see that.
"What's your trouble?" I said.
"Tell me what it is you want.
I'm pretty busy."
I wasn't meaning to hurry her, but a man just hasn't got the time they have out there.
"It's the female trouble," she said.
"Oh," I said.
"Is that all?" I thought maybe she was younger than she looked, and her first one had scared her, or maybe one had been a little abnormal as it will in young women.
"Where's your ma?" I said.
"Haven't you got one?"
"She's out yonder in the wagon," she said.
"Why not talk to her about it before you take any medicine," I said.
"Any woman would have told you about it."
She looked at me, and I looked at her again and said, "How old are you?"
"Seventeen," she said.
"Oh," I said.
"I thought maybe you were . . . She was watching me.
But then, in the eyes all of them look like they had no age and knew everything in the world, anyhow.
"Are you too regular, or not regular enough?"
She quit looking at me but she didn't move.
"Yes," she said.
"I reckon so.
Yes."
"Well, which?" I said.