No prize-ring can live without one. The odds are too hard on us. My lady ought to take into account I behaved respectful when I was obliged to do my lord's orders and remove her from our haunts, which wasn't to his taste. Here I'm like a cannon for defending the house, needs be, and all inside flies off scarified.' 'It strikes me, Kit Ines, a man with a paytron is no better than a tool of a man,' said Madge. 'And don't you go to be sneering at honest tools,' Ines retorted. 'When will women learn a bit of the world before they're made hags of by old Father Wear-and-Tear! A young woman in her prime, you Madge! be such a fool as not see I serve tool to stock our shop.' 'Your paytron bid you steal off with my lady's child, Kit Ines, you'd do it to stock your shop.' Ines puffed. 'If you ain't a girl to wallop the wind! Fancy me at that game! Is that why my lady--but I can't be suspected that far? You make me break out at my pores. My paytron's a gentleman: he wouldn't ask and I couldn't act such a part. Dear Lord! it'd have to be stealing off, for my lady can use a stick; and put it to the choice between my lady and her child and any paytron living, paytron be damned, I'd say, rather'n go against my notions of honour. Have you forgot all our old talk about the prize-ring, the nursery of honour in Old England?' 'That was before you sold yourself to a paytron, Kit Ines.' 'Ah! Women wants mast-heading off and on, for 'em to have a bit of a look-out over life as it is. They go stewing over books of adventure and drop into frights about awful man. Take me, now; you had a no small admiration for my manly valour once, and you trusted yourself to me, and did you ever repent it?--owning you're not the young woman to tempt to t' other way.' 'You wouldn't have found me talking to you here if I had.' 'And here I'm left to defend an empty castle, am I?' 'Don't drink or you'll have your paytron on you. He's good use there.' 'I ask it, can I see my lady?' 'Drunk nor sober you won't. Serve a paytron, be a leper, you'll find, with all honest folk.' Ines shook out an execrating leg at the foul word. 'Leper, you say? You say that? You say leper to me?' 'Strut your tallest, Kit Ines. It's the money rattles in your pocket says it.' 'It's my reputation for decent treatment of a woman lets you say it, Madge Winch.' 'Stick to that as long as your paytron consents. It's the one thing you've got left.' 'Benefit, you hussy, and mind you don't pull too stiff.' 'Be the woman and have the last word!' His tongue was checked. He swallowed the exceeding sourness of a retort undelivered, together with the feeling that she beat him in the wrangle by dint of her being an unreasonable wench. Madge huffed away to fill her boxes.