The remembrance of her present penury rushed back to her. With five guineas a week coming in directly, she had no money to go on with in the meanwhile. To walk about the streets all day, without even a biscuit between the scanty meals at home, would be impossible. She questioned desperately what there remained to her to pawn--what she was to do. Gaining her room, she eyed her little bag of linen forlornly; she did not think she could borrow anything on articles like these, neither could she spare any of them, nor summon the courage to put them on a counter. Suddenly the inspiration came to her that there was the bag itself. And at dusk she went out with it. This time the pawnbroker omitted to inquire if she had a halfpenny; he deducted the cost of the ticket from the amount of the loan. Taking the bull by the horns, she next sought the landlady, and said that she would be unable to pay the impending bill when it came up, but that she would pay that and the next one together. "I've found work," she said, feeling like a housemaid. "If you wouldn't mind letting it stand over----" Mrs. Shuttleworth dried her fingers on her apron, and agreed with less hesitation than her lodger had feared. Convinced that her specimen was mastered--she had rehearsed two or three little gusts of eulogy which she thought would sound spontaneous--Mary now considered calling on the Macphersons to inform them of the result of their suggestion. Reluctant to intrude, she had half decided to write, but with her limited means, the stamp was an object, and besides, she was uncertain of the number. She determined on the visit. The door was opened by Charlotte, and hastily explaining the motive for the call, Mary followed her inside. She found the parlour in a state of confusion, and gathered from the trio in a breath that destiny, in the form of Pilcher's, had ordered that Mr. Macpherson should be torn from his family a week earlier than the severance had been anticipated. "He's going to Leeds to-morrow," exclaimed the little woman distractedly, oppressed by an armful of shirts that fell from her one by one as she moved; "and it wasn't till this afternoon we heard a word about it. Oh dear! oh dear! how many's that, James?" "'Tis thirty-three," said the traveller, "an', as ye weel ken, it should be thirty-sax! I canna see the use o' a body havin' thirty-sax shirts if they can never be found." "I'm afraid I'm in the way," murmured Mary; "I just looked in to say it's all satisfactory, and to tell you how much obliged I am. I won't stop." "You're not in the way at all. You've got one on, James: that's thirty-four! My dear, would you mind counting these shirts for me? I declare my head's going round!" She held the bundle out to Mary feebly, and, dropping on to the traveller's box, watched her with harassed eyes.