"You haven't paid me yet, sir," she said, rather sharply. "No, Miss--in one moment, if you will allow me." After awhile, during which Mattie moved from one foot to another in her impatience, he drew forth a sovereign and laid it on the counter. "We're short of change, sir--if you have anything smaller----" "Nothing smaller, I am compelled to say, Miss." Mattie hesitated. Under other circumstances, she would have left her shop, ran into the pork-butcher's next door, and procured change, after a hint to Harriet to look to the business; but she detected the _ruse_ of the prowler, and was not to be outwitted. She opened her till again, and found fourteen shillings in silver--represented by a preponderance of threepenny pieces, but that was of no consequence, save that it took him longer to count--and from a lower drawer she drew forth one of many five-shilling packets of coppers, which pawnbrokers and publicans on Saturday nights were glad to give Mr. Wesden silver for, and laid it down with a heavy dab on the counter. "What--what's that?" he ejaculated. "That's ha'pence--that's all the change we've got--and I can't leave the shop," said Mattie, briskly. "You can give me my cigars back and get change for yourself, if you don't like it." "Thank you," was the suave answer, "I was not thinking much about the change. If you will buy yourself a new bonnet with it, you will be conferring a favour upon me." "And what favour will you want back?" asked Mattie, quickly. "Oh! I will leave that to time and your kindness--come, will you take it and be friends with me? I want a friend in this quarter very much." He pushed the silver and the cumbrous packet of coppers towards her. He was inclined to be liberal. He remembered how many he had dazzled in his time by his profuse munificence. Money he had never studied in his life, and by the strange rule of contraries, he had had plenty of it. Mattie was impulsive--even passionate, and the effort to corrupt her allegiance to the Wesdens fired her blood to a degree that she even wondered at herself shortly afterwards. "Take yourself out of this shop, you bad man," she cried, "and your trumpery change too! Be off with you before I call a policeman, or throw something at you--you great big coward, to be always coming here insulting us!" With her impatient hands she swept the money off the counter, five-shilling packet of coppers and all, which fell with a crash, and disgorged its contents on the floor. "What--what do you mean?" stammered the prowler. "I mean that it's no good you're coming here, and that nobody wants to see you here again, and that I'll set the policeman on you next time you give me any of your impudence. Get out with you, you coward!"