"Well, sir, I can't, if you blow me up now you're in misfortune; I can't keep good if you don't let me have my way in little things. I'll be very careful, I will, indeed, Mr. Cohen. It's almost the first time in my life I've bought any flowers at all for any one else, and it ain't in you, sir, to take away pleasure from anybody--and did you see, sir, how happy missis looked when she came in?" Thus inconsequentially Prissy, mixing her arguments in the strangest manner. "But, my good girl," said Aaron, kindly, "you have no business to waste your money; you must think of your future." "It's what I am thinking of, sir; I don't want to grow wicked, and flowers are the only things that will prevent me. It's the honest truth, sir; they make me feel good. Mr. Cohen, if it hadn't been for you, where should I have been? In the gutter, I daresay. You took me out of it, sir. I don't forget the first night I come to you with Victoria Regina in Gosport; if I lived to be as old as Methusalem I couldn't never forget it. And then when missis got me the gillard water to bathe my eyes--I should be the ungratefullest woman that ever drew breath if I could forget those things. Do, please, sir, let me have my way. You've paid me a lot more wages than I was worth, and all my money is in the post office savings bank, and it ain't mine at all, it's yours----" "My good Prissy," said Aaron, much affected, for Prissy could not continue, her voice was so full of tears, "do as you wish, but be very careful, as you have promised. Perhaps fortune will turn again, and then----" "And then, sir," said Prissy, taking up his words, "you shall give it all back to me--and I'll take it then, sir, you see if I don't. It will turn, if there's any fairness anywhere. And now, if you'll forgive me, sir, I must go and look after the dinner." Aaron was very busy for several days after this making a careful inventory of his possessions in the house in Prince's Gate, which he sent to the appointed liquidators of the bankrupt bank. Of all the debtors he was the only one who did not wait for the law's decree to give up his fortune to the last farthing, and perhaps he was the only one whose conscience was free of the intention of wrong.