“Grandma slaves, too,” said the rebel on the stairway; “she slaves more’n you do, and Uncle Gam slaves the most.” Further revelations were stopped by another ring at the bell. Visitors were evidently rare, for everybody but Mariposa flew to the hall and precipitated themselves down the stairs. In the general interest the recent battle was forgotten, the rebel earning his pardon by getting to the door before any one else. The new-comer was Mariposa’s expressman. She had already seen through her window the uncovered cart with her few belongings glistening with rain. The driver, a grimy youth in a steaming blouse, was standing in the doorway with the wet receipt flapping in his hand. “It’s your things,” yelled the boys. “Tell him to bring them up,” said Mariposa, who was now at the stair-head herself. The man stepped into the hall and looked up at her. He had a singularly red and impudent face. “Not till I get my two dollars and a half,” he said. “Two dollars and a half!” echoed Mariposa in alarm, for a dollar was beginning to look larger to her than it ever had done before. “It was only a dollar.” “A dollar!” he shouted. “A dollar for that load!”--pointing to the street--“say, you’ve got a gall!” Mariposa flushed. She had never been spoken to this way before in her life. She leaned over the balustrade and said haughtily: “Bring in my things, and when they’re up here I will give you the dollar you agreed upon.” The man gave a loud, derisive laugh. “That beats anything!” he said, and then roared through the door to his pard: “Say, she wants to give us a dollar for that load. Ain’t that rich?” There was a moment’s silence in the hall. A vulgar wrangle was almost impossible to the girl at the juncture to which the depressing and hideous events of the last few weeks had brought her. Yet she had still a glimmer of spirit left, and her gorge rose at the impudent swindle. “I won’t pay you two dollars and a half, and I will have my things,” she said. “Bring them up at once.” The man laughed again, this time with an uglier note. “I guess not, young woman,” he said, lounging against the balustrade. “I guess you’ll have to fork out the two fifty or whistle for your things.” Mariposa made no answer. Her hand shaking with rage, she began to fumble in her pocket for her purse. The whole Garcia family, assembled in the hallway beneath, breathed audibly in the tense excitement of the moment, and kept moving their eyes from her to the expressman and back again. The Chinaman from the kitchen had joined them, listening with the charmed smile which the menials of that race always wear on occasions of domestic strife. “Say,” said the man, coming a step up the stairs and assuming a suddenly threatening air, “I can’t stay fooling round here all day. I want my money, and I want it quick. D’ye hear?”