"I suppose," he said, with scorn, at the end of his address, "as you kin understand plain English? We _down’t sell powders_. And if we did, we couldn’t sell ’em for a penny. These powders cost _us_ frippence. Did ye tell yere mother that?" "Yus," responded the girl, "but mother says she can’t ’elp _your_ troubles." Wilfered held on to the pill-tub and looked wildly about him. Then, with a deep-drawn sigh, he held out a powder and took the penny. "What is the use o’ arguin?" he demanded of your servant. "Look what you got to contend against." *XXXV* *STILL MORE OF PRUDENCE* Baffin came bouncing in one morning and bounced me off the gas-stove. His hair was ruffled and his face was flushed and his eyes were flashing sparks. "My God!" he cried. "I—I’ve made a weird, a wild, a terrible discovery. Good God, who would have thought it! That child, mind you, that imbecile. ’God, sir, if this were a humane and Christian country, I should be allowed to call the damned beast out and carve patterns on him." "You are referring to——" "Prudence—Prudence," responded Baffin, with agitation. "She HAS TOLD ME ALL. Come in and see her." Prudence had flung herself down upon a grimy sugar-box, and lay there, still and bruised and broken. There was an awful quiet in the room. Baffin resumed his remarks in reference to the subject of damned beasts. I hushed him with a grave, paternal glance. "Think of poor Prudence," I said. Prudence rose slowly to her feet. She thrust back the hair from before her eyes. "Oh, my Gawd! Mr. Baffin," she said, "you do gow in for the funniest talk ever! ’Ere—I say, when I was down there, do you know what I see? I see as there is a crack in that sugar-box; I do believe that’s where I dropped that picture powstcard what I lorst ’ere last sittin’. "Oo-er, it will be all right if we can find it there, wown’t it, now? I ’ave missed that card, I can’t tell you! ’Cos my mother give me that card, an’ I love everythink what my mother gives me. You dunnow _what_ a good mother I got, Mr. Baffin. She’s working ’ard all day to bring me up proper, she is, an’ the place on ’er arm is _ever_ so bad still. If on’y I could learn to sit still, I could earn a lot of menny to give to my mother, couldn’t I, Mr. Baffin? ’Cos you said so, didn’t you, Mr. Baffin? "See if I don’t learn to sit still; people that try can always succeed, can’t they? My mother often tells me that. Be a dear, an’ move the box, Mr. Baffin."