"It's just awfie expensive bein' ill," replied Mother Gilchrist calmly. "Ye can hae the reckonin' later on. Meanwhile, tak yer nourishment like a good lammie." "What's ten pun' to you one way or another," continued the exemplar of youth, when Marmie, up for the first time, returned to the charge. "You've gotten a paper in yon purse that's worth a guid deal tae you, my lass, if it's written in the man's own write--an' if ye can prove----" Marrion interrupted her in an angry flash. "You're making a mistake. It has nothing to do wi' me. An' I wouldn't prove if I could." She paused, feeling she was contradicting herself. "Lord sakes," retorted Mother Gilchrist, "ye needna loup down a body's throat! An', anyhow, a lassie wi' such hair as you've gotten needna look for ten pounds." Marrion, still weakened body and soul by her illness, thought almost regretfully of her hairdresser. "Aye," she assented languidly, "they'd give me that for it; but I should feel bad if it were cut off, shouldn't I?" Mother Gilchrist burst into a cackling laugh. "There's more ways, my lammie, o' makin' money by hair than by shearin' it off like a sheep's fleece," she said meaningly. But the meaning did not come home to Marmie until one of the rather bedraggled girls in cheap finery let her into the secret of the house. They paid Mother Gilchrist a certain sum for board and lodging, and on the whole she was kind to them. Anyhow, they had to lump it, as most of them were in debt to her. However, there was always the chance of a stroke of luck, especially when one was new to the business and had such hair as Marrion had. That same afternoon Marrion managed to creep round to the coach office. She intended to get her box and pawn some of her things--even the little brilliant brooch of her father's--so as to keep her in decent lodgings till she could find employment in some dressmaking concern. She would not go back to her old employers, for her address there was known and she wanted to lose herself; for a while at any rate.