woman. I'm needed in the kitchen this minute, to
see to the dishing-up. Have the goodness to come to the point. Is Miss
Lang going to pay? If she is, well and good. She can keep her room. If
she isn't--" The accompanying gesture was eloquent.

Mrs. Slawson's chair gave forth another whine of reproach as she settled
down on it with a sort of inflexible determination that defied argument.

"So that's your ultomato?" she inquired calmly. "I understand you to say
that if this young lady (who any one with a blind eye can see she's
_quality_), I understand you to say, that if she don't pay down every
cent she owes you, here an' now, you'll put her out, bag an' baggage?"

"No, not bag and baggage, Mrs. Slawson," interposed the boarding-house
keeper with a wry smile, bridling with the sense that she was about to
say something she considered rather neat, "I am, as you might say,
holding her bag and baggage--as security."

"Now what do you think o' that!" ejaculated Martha Slawson.

"It's quite immaterial to me what anybody thinks of it," Mrs. Daggett
snapped. "And now, if that's all you've got to suggest, why, I'm sure
it's all I have, and so, the sooner we end this, the sooner I'll be at
liberty to attend to my dinner."

Still Mrs. Slawson did not stir.

"I suppose you think you're a lady," she observed without the faintest
suggestion of heat. "I suppose you think you're a lady, but you
certainly ain't workin' at it now. What takes my time, though, is the
way you ackchelly seem to be meanin' what you say! Why, I wouldn't turn
a dog out a night like this, an' you'd let a delicate young girl go into
the drivin' storm, a stranger, without a place to lay her head--that is,
for all _you_ know. I could bet my life, without knowin' a thing about
it, that the good Lord never let you have a daughter of your own. He
wouldn't trust the keepin' of a child's body, not to speak of her soul,
to such as you. That is, He wouldn't if He could help Himself. But,
thanks be! Miss Lang ain't dependent. She's well an' able to pay all she
owes. Supposin' she _has_ been kinder strapped for a little while back,
an' had to economize by comin' to such a place as this! I've knowed
others, compelled to economize with three trunks alongside a
hall-bedroom wall, for a while, too, an' by an' by their circumstances
was such that they had money to burn. It's not for the likes of Miss
Lang to try to transack business with your sort. It would soil her lips