"What do you think I am doing Miss Ward?" Claude stopped walking to look at her. "You know as well as me that there is little to no work in this town that isn't already being done by someone. If selling off almost empty bottles of alcohol and my lot of monthly tobacco keeps that roof over my siblings heads, then that's what I will do. So dam well mind yourself, I'm not Simon."

He turned and kept walking, switching shoulders the basket was on. Perhaps he went to far, but she needed to leave it alone.