Still it was long before she left off locking her door and hiding the key, if she turned her back for a minute, and taking every body she did not know for a thief. She was left to her own notions; but with Harry a serious remonstrance was necessary, more than once, within the first year of his new service. Miss Foote was as much annoyed as amused with his higgling ways, all in zeal for her interests. She feared that she should have the reputation in the neighborhood of being a perfect miser, so wonderful were Harry's stories of the bargains he attempted to drive. She told him she hoped he would never succeed in any one such bargain as the many he told her of; and she laid her positive commands upon him never, in her name, to beat down the seller of any article she sent him to buy. As she supposed, she found he had caught up the trick from example, and had not the knowledge whereby to remedy it. When she told him it was not the way of the place to cheat in making charges he shook his head, and very nearly put his tongue in his cheek; but when she explained to him how prices came to be, and how an article can not properly be bought for less than it took to make or grow it, he was convinced at once, and his higgling method was softened down into a mere excessive strictness and vigilance in buying and selling transactions. There never was any real meanness about the man. In a few months he sent his father ten shillings; in a few months more he sent him £1. A small anecdote will show better than this, that money is not naturally the first object with him. When his employer kills a pig he is allowed to take a quarter at wholesale price, and Dinah cures the ham so well that by selling it they get their bacon for next to nothing. One autumn, when two pigs were killed, there was such a scramble for them, and so many neighbors would be "hurt in their feelings" if they could not have a portion, that Miss Foote found herself left with two gammons, but no ham. Harry heard this in the kitchen. He kept silence till his ham was finely cured, and then, touching his hat as if asking a favor, he told his employer that she had done good things for him, and he had never been able to do any for her, and he should be much pleased if she would take the ham for what he gave for it. Though not agreeing to this exactly, Miss Foote found herself obliged to take the ham very cheap.