A fearsome change came over the countenance of the respectable young person in the frilled apron. "Are you meaning to insinooate that _I_ took them groceries?" she demanded fiercely. "I'll ask you to prove that same. Prove it, I say! It's a lie, an' I'd be willin' to swear to it in a court of justice. That's what comes of me workin' for poor folks that can't pay their bills!" Miss McMurtry swung about on her heels and included Elizabeth in the lightning of her gaze. "I come here to accomydate her, thinkin' she was a perfec' lady, an' I've slaved night an' day in her kitchen a-tryin' my best to please her, an' this is what I gets for it! But you can't take my character away that easy; I've the best of references; an' I'll trouble you for my wages--if you can pay 'em. If not, there's ways I can collect 'em." "Pay her, Sam, and let her go, do!" begged Elizabeth in a frightened whisper. "I ought not to pay the girl, I'm sure of that; but to save you further annoyance, my dear--" He counted out twenty-two dollars, and pushed the little pile of bills across the table. "Take it," he said peremptorily, "and go." The two gazed at each other in silence while the loud trampling footsteps of the erstwhile gentle and noiseless Annita sounded in the rear. Then, when a violent and expressive bang of the kitchen door announced the fact that their domestic had finally shaken off the dust of her departure against them, Elizabeth burst into a relieved laugh. She came presently and perched on her husband's knee. "Sam, dear," she murmured, "it is all my fault, every bit of it. No; don't contradict me--nor interrupt--please! We can't afford to go on this way, and we're not going to. We'll begin over again, just as we meant to before I--" she paused while a flood of shamed colour swept over her drooped face "--tried to be fashionable. It isn't really so very much fun to go to card-parties and teas and luncheons, and I don't care a bit about it all, especially if--if it is going to cost us too much; and I--can see that it has already." All her little newly acquired graces and affectations dropped away as she spoke, and her husband saw the sweet, womanly soul he had loved and longed for in the beginning looking out of her brown eyes. He kissed her thankfully, almost solemnly. "Dear Betty," he whispered. "Couldn't we--go away from this place?" she went on after a while. "It isn't very pleasant, is it? and--I'm almost ashamed to say it--but Evelyn Tripp has such a way of making things look different to one. What she says sounds so--so _sensible_ that I can't--at least I haven't done as I intended in hardly anything."