“Would you now?” said Miss Allyn, who was chewing gum vigorously. “Yes, I would,” snapped the woman, “but perhaps you don’t know who these two innocent-looking creatures are. They’re them Marlowe girls that’s been made notorious of late in the papers.” “You don’t say!” said Miss Allyn, still chewing vigorously. Her extraordinary manner made her audience stare a little. “I didn’t know it ’til to-day that I was harborin’ such critters, but out they go to-night. I won’t keep ’em a day longer. My house is respectable. I don’t want no——” “Hold on Mrs. Garvin!” said Miss Allyn with a sudden ring in her voice, “you are ‘barking up the wrong tree’ this time, old lady! I’m better acquainted with your boarders than you think, perhaps. Do you want me to tell you the class of people you are harboring?” Mrs. Garvin’s red face grew paler as she listened, but she was too thoroughly angry to think of being prudent. “There’s no one in my house but honest people,” she began, but Miss Allyn stopped her with an imperious gesture. “There’s one detective, one rogue and one sneak thief,” she said quietly, “besides an actor, two actresses and a red-headed grass widow. Not that I blame her hair, Mrs. Garvin. I’d turn pale, too, if I was in such close company to the widow.” Mrs. Garvin’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. She had not dreamed of any one having such “dead wood” on her boarders, for if there was anything wrong about any of them she had been paid not to know it. “Now if these poor girls could have given you an extra ten now and then you wouldn’t have taken such a dislike to them,” went on Miss Allyn, quietly, “but as they happen to be poor and you happen to know it you are going to kick them out of your house this evening.” “And with a week’s board in advance in her pocket, too!” broke in Marion, “but is it really true, Miss Allyn, about the other boarders?” “As true as gospel,” said Miss Allyn, calmly, “but don’t you wish to know who the sneak thief is, Mrs. Garvin?” The landlady reddened to the roots of her hair. “What’s your business, anyhow?” she snapped, turning upon Miss Allyn, furiously. “My business is minding other people’s,” said Miss Allyn, smiling; “or, in other words I am a newspaper reporter.” “Oh! oh!” gasped Mrs. Garvin, almost shaking in her shoes. “So you’ve been spying on my boarders while you lived in my house! Oh, it’s a nice business, that! A sneaking, prying occupation!” “It pays,” said Miss Allyn, with a shrug of her shoulders, “but come on, old lady, pony up that eight dollars. You don’t want me filling up my paper with what I know about you, do you?” “You don’t dare!” Mrs. Garvin made her last effort to frighten her boarder, but a contemptuous glance was Miss Allyn’s only answer. “We will not go one step until we get it,” said Marion, calmly. “So you can take your choice, Mrs. Garvin, it is a week’s board or our money back.”