The first thing I remember which called my attention to Mary's firm manner of doing business was one day when I was writing letters in the Angel's study. We had only moved in the day before, and the ink on the lease was hardly dry, when I heard a great noise in the kitchen as of moving chairs on a bare floor and Mary's voice raised in fluent denunciation. I flew to the scene and saw a strange man standing on the table with his hands on the electric light metre over the door, while Mary had one hand on his left ankle, and the other on his coat-tails. Her very spectacles were bristling with anger. "Come down out of that, young feller!" she was crying, jerking both coat-tails and ankle of the unhappy man. "Leggo my leg!" he retorted. "_I'll_ pull your leg for you," cried Mary, "old woman that I am, more than any of your young jades, if you don't drop that metre. Come down, I say!" "What is the trouble, Mary?" I asked. "Missis! The impidence of that brat! He's come to shut off the electric light without a word of warning, and you going to have company this blessed night for dinner." "Here are my orders," said the man, sullenly. "I'd show them to you if you'd leggo my coat-tails," he added, furiously. "I'll pull them off before I let go," said Mary, grimly. "A pretty way for the New York Electric Light Company to do business _I_ say! If you want a five-dollar deposit from the Missis why didn't you write and give notice like a Christian? Do you suppose we are thieves? Are we going to loot the house of the electric bulbs, and go and live in splendour on the guilty sales of them?" "Let me cut it off according to orders, and I'll go to the office and explain, and come back and turn it on for you!" pleaded the man. But Mary's grasp on leg and coat was firm. "Not on yer life," she said, derisively. "You'll come back this day week or next month at your own good pleasure, and Mr. Jardine will be doing the explaining and the running to the office. Make up your mind that the thing is going to be settled _my_ way, or you'll stay here till you do. _I'm_ in no hurry." "Make her leggo of me," he said to me. Mary gave me a look, and I obediently turned my back. The man slammed the little door of the metre, and Mary let go of him. He climbed down. "I can turn it off in the basement just as well," he said, with a grin. I was about to interfere and offer a cheque, but Mary was too quick for me. She took him by the arm, with a "Come, Missis," and marched him before her, with me meekly following, to the telephone in the Angel's study. "Now, then, young feller, call up the office!" she commanded. The man obeyed. Indeed few would have dared to resist. "Now get away and let the Missis talk to your boss. Tell him what we think of such doings, Missis."