"If your mistress won't pay you your wages, I will. There! take that. You're quite welcome. What matter which pays you? It all comes out of the same stocking-foot." "I don't know yet," answered Mary, "whether I shall accept wages from Mrs. Redmain. Something might happen to make it impossible; or, if I had taken money, to make me regret it." "I like that! There you keep a hold on her!" said Mr. Redmain, in a confidential tone, while in his heart he was more puzzled than ever. "There's no occasion, though, for all that," he went on, "to go without your money when you can have it and she be nothing the wiser. There--take it. I will swear you any oath you like not to tell my stingy wife." "She is not stingy," said Mary; "and, if I don't take wages from her, I certainly shall not from any one else.--Besides," she added, "it would be dishonest." "Oh! that's the dodge!" said Mr. Redmain to himself; but aloud, "Where would be the dishonesty, when the money is mine to do with as I please?" "Where the dishonesty, sir!" exclaimed Mary, astounded. "To take wages from you, and pretend to Mrs. Redmain I was going without!" "Ha! ha! The first time, no doubt, you ever pretended anything!" "It would be," said Mary, "so far as I can, at the moment, remember." "Go along," cried Mr. Redmain, losing, or pretending to lose, patience with her; "you are too unscrupulous a liar for me to deal with." Mary turned and left the room. As she went, his keen glance caught the expression of her countenance, and noted the indignant red that flushed her cheeks, and the lightning of wronged innocence in her eyes. "I ought not to have said it," he remarked to himself. He did not for a moment fancy she had spoken the truth; but the look of her went to a deeper place in him than he knew even the existence of. "Hey! stop," he cried, as she was disappearing. "Come back, will you?" "I will find Mr. Mewks," she answered, and went.