With a sudden movement John Dene sprang up and proceeded to pace up and down the room. From time to time he glanced at Dorothy, who sat pencil and note-book ready for the flood of staccatoed sentences that usually accompanied these pacings to and fro. At length he came to a standstill in the middle of the room, planted his feet wide apart as if to steady the resolution to which he had apparently come. "Say, what's all this worth to you?" he blurted out. Dorothy looked up in surprise, not grasping his meaning. "Worth to me?" she queried, her head on one side, the tip of her pencil resting on her lower lip. "Yes; what do they pay you?" "Oh! I see. Thirty-five shillings a week and, if I become a permanent, a pension when I'm too old to enjoy it," she laughed. "That is if the Hun hasn't taken us over by then." "That'll be about nine dollars a week," mumbled John Dene, twisting his cigar round between his lips. "Well, you're worth twenty dollars a week to me, so I'll make up the rest." "I'm quite satisfied, thank you," she said, drawing herself up slightly. "Well, I'm not," he blurted out. "You're going to work well for me, and you're going to be well paid." "I'm afraid I cannot accept it," she said firmly, "although it's very kind of you," she added with a smile. He regarded her in surprise. It was something new to him to find anyone refusing an increase in salary. His cigar twirled round with remarkable rapidity. "I suppose I'm getting his goat," thought Dorothy, as she watched him from beneath lowered lashes. "Why won't you take it?" he demanded. "I'm afraid I cannot accept presents," she said with what she thought a disarming smile. "Oh, shucks!" John Dene was annoyed. "If the Admiralty thought I was worth more than thirty-five shillings a week, they would pay me more." "Well, I'm not going to have anyone around that doesn't get a living wage," he announced explosively. "Does that mean that I had better go?" she inquired calmly. "No, it doesn't. You just stay right here till I get back," was the reply, and he opened the door and disappeared, leaving Dorothy with the conviction that someone was to suffer because, in John Dene's opinion, she was inadequately paid. As she waited for John Dene's return, she could not keep her thoughts from what an extra forty-five shillings a week would mean to her. She could increase the number and quality of the little "surprises" she took home with her to the mother in whose life she bulked so largely. Peaches could be bought without the damning prefix "tinned"; salmon without the discouraging modification "Canadian"; eggs that had not long since forgotten what hen had laid them and when. She could take her more often to a theatre, or for a run in a taxi when she was tired. In short, a hundred and seventeen pounds a year would buy quite a lot of rose-leaves with which to colour her mother's life.