"Don't you think you've a little gift of you're own in that direction? I do! It was bad enough to sneak off from me like that; but to steal the old girl's money was playing it too low down!" "What are you talking about? What do you mean?" "You know very well what I'm talking about! Do you think that I don't know--and that everybody doesn't know--that you broke into Mrs. Macconichie's cupboard and stole her savings? A pretty mess I got into because you were a thief! You don't happen to know, I suppose, that they locked me up for what you'd done, and that they only let me go when I proved that that sort of thing wasn't quite in my line." "Serve you right!" "What served me right?--locking me up, or letting me go?" "Anything would serve you right, you brute!" "Brute, am I? All right, my lady! if that's the way you're going to talk to me I'll soon let the police know whereabouts you are, and then they'll serve you right. A good taste of prison would do you good, you dirty thief!" "Don't shout like that!" "Then don't you call me names. I'm not a thief whatever else I am." "I'm not so sure of that. What are you doing here?" "What do you mean, what am I doing here?" "I thought you'd gone back to London long ago." "Then you're wrong, because I haven't; and what's more, I'm not likely to go. I've been having a real bad time, that's what I've been having." "Haven't those rich friends of yours sent that remittance you were always gassing about?" "No, they haven't." After a pause, he added, sullenly, "My old mother's allowing me a pound a week, and I'm living on that. So now you know." "Honest?" "It's the gospel truth. So you'll be able to judge for yourself how likely I am to be able to get back to London on that, especially as she won't let me have a penny in advance." "A nice sort you are!--after the lies you told me about the tons of money you'd got yourself, and the other tons your friends had got!--a pound a week!" "Anyhow I'm not a thief." "And I shouldn't have been a thief if I hadn't listened to your lies; and very well you know it. I've had enough of you; take yourself off!" "Take myself off?" "Yes, take yourself off, before I tell some one to take you." "Well! you've got a face! If I do go I'll put the police on to you, and then you'll sing a different song." "You dare!" "Dare!" he laughed, not pleasantly. "What is there to dare? I'd think as little of putting the police on to you as I would of putting a dog on to a cat. They'd soon show you your place, you thief!" There was an interval of silence, during which she looked at him over the intervening bracken. If looks could kill he would have dropped dead where he stood. "Well, are you going to take yourself off, or am I to tell them to take you?"