The noise in question was the unmistakable one of a woman's loud sobbing. It came nearer and nearer, gaining in fullness and volume as it approached the house. Mrs. Cameron was always intensely curious. She threw open the drawing-room window; and as the sufferer approached, effectually stopped her progress with her own stout person. "Now, my dear, good creature, what is this most unpleasant sound? Don't you know that it is frightfully bad-mannered to cry in that loud, unrestrained fashion? Pray restrain yourself. You are quite childish. You cannot know what real affliction means. Now, if you had lost a--a---- If, my poor woman, you had lost a dear little dog!" "Is it a dog?" gasped Mrs. Ricketts, for it was she. "Is it a dog? Oh, my word! Much you know about 'flictions and such-like! Let me go to the house, ma'am. It isn't to you as I has come to tell my tale." "Then let me inform you that you are going to tell it to no one else. Here I stand, and here I remain until you choose to explain to me the reason of your loud bursts of uncontrollable grief. During the illness of its master I am the mistress here, and either you speak to me or you go home." Mrs. Ricketts had by this time so far restrained her sobs as to be able to take a long and very acute glance at the lady in question. Doubtless she was face to face with the formidable Mrs. Cameron, that terrible personage who had got her Maggie dismissed, and who had locked up poor darling Miss Polly for days in her bedroom. There was no one, perhaps, in the world whom Mrs. Ricketts more cordially disliked than this good lady, but all the same, it was now her policy to propitiate her. She smoothed, therefore, her brow, dried her eyes, and, with a profound courtesy, began her tale. "Ef you please, ma'am, it's this way; it's my character that's at stake. I always was, and always will be, honest of the honest. 'Ard I works, ma'am, and the bread of poverty I eats, but honest I am, and honest I brings up those fatherless lambs, my children." Mrs. Cameron waved one of her fat hands impressively. "Pardon me, my good woman. I am really not interested in your family. Pray come to the point, and then go home." "To the p'int, ma'am? Oh, yes, I'll come to the p'int. This is the p'int ef you please, ma'am," and she suddenly thrust, almost into Mrs. Cameron's dazzled face, the splendid gleam and glitter of a large unset diamond. "This is the p'int, ma'am; this is what's to take my character away, and the bread out of the mouths of my innocent children."