The Artist felt that there was nothing for it but to grapple with the situation. He shouted at the indignant young woman, "Don't be such a confounded idiot, girl! I mean, don't be such an insufferable goose. I tell you, you're under a complete misconception. Nobody's ever said anything against you. Nobody's said a word against your confounded character, and be hanged to it! Do have a little common sense! A young woman of your age ought to be ashamed to be such a fool." But Sairah's entrenchments were strengthened, if anything. "It's easy calling fool," said she. "And as for saying against, who's using expressions, and passing off remarks now?" Controversial opponents incapable of understanding anything whatever are harder to refute than the shrewdest intellects. Mr. Aiken felt that Sairah was oak and triple brass against logical conviction. Explanation only made matters worse. A vague desperate idea of summoning his wife and accusing Sairah of intoxication, as a sort of universal solvent, crossed his mind; and he actually went so far as to look out into the passage for her, but only to find that she had vanished for the moment. Coning back, he assumed a sudden decisive tone, saying, "There--that'll do, Sairah! Now go." But Sairah wasn't going to give in, evidently, and he added, "I mean, that's enough!" Whether it was or wasn't, Sairah showed no signs of concession. _She_ was going, no fear! She was going--ho yes!--she was going. She said she was going so often that Mr. Aiken said at last, "Well, go!" But when the young woman began to go--vengefully, as it were, even as a quadruped suddenly stung by an ill-deserved whip--he inconsequently exclaimed, "Stop!" For a fell purpose had been visible in her manner. What, he asked, was she going to do? What was she going to do? Oh yes!--it was easy asking questions. But the answer would reach Mr. Aiken in due course. Nevertheless, if he wanted to know, she would be generous, and tell him. She wasn't an underhand girl, like the majority of her sex at her age. Mean concealments were foreign to her nature. She was going straight to Mrs. Aching to give a month's warning, and you might summing in the police to search her box. All should be aboveboard, as had been the case in her family for generations past, and she never had experienced such treatment all the places she'd been in, nor yet expected to it.