arketing. Without paying any attention to
the command, I served up at meal-time whatever there was in the house.
This brought out murmurs from the boarders, and haughty inquiries from
the host himself. All the reply I vouchsafed was, that what he procured
I would cook. In this way I forced him to pay out the money in his
possession, at the expense of my character as a good wife, and a polite
one. He took his revenge in abusive language, and occasional fits of
destructiveness in the kitchen, which alarmed my little German neighbor
more than it did me. So long as he secured all my earnings, and deceived
people thoroughly as to his real conduct, he maintained, before others
at least, a gentlemanly demeanor. But this was gradually giving way to
the pressure of a constant thorn in his flesh, and the consciousness of
his own baseness. He could swear, threaten, and almost strike at slight
provocation now. He never really attempted the latter, but once, and it
was then I told him I should shoot him, if he dared it.

"I ought to say here, that in the last year I had two or three families
in the house for a short time. I don't know what these real wives
thought of me; that I was a termagant probably; but they were not the
kind of women I could talk to about myself, and I made no confidences. A
plan was maturing in my mind that was to make it a matter of
indifference what any one thought. I had relinquished the idea of
getting money enough together to make a sure start in California, and
was only waiting to have enough to take me out of the country in any way
that I could go cheapest. Another necessary point to gain was secrecy.
That could not be gained while I was surrounded by boarders, nor while
Mr. Seabrook was in the house, and I resolved to be rid of both."

"Oh," I cried, delighted and relieved, "how _did_ you manage that?"

"I am going to tell you by how simple an expedient. _I starved them
out!_"

"How strange that in all those years you never thought of that," I said
laughing. "But, then, neither did Homer's heroine, who kept a
first-class free boarding house for twice or thrice as long as you. Do
tell me how you accomplished the feat of clearing your house."

"It is not quite true that I had not thought of it; but I had not dared
to do it. Besides, I wanted to get some money, if possible. Perhaps I
should not have done it at the time I did, had not a little help come to
me in the shape of real friends. I was all the