didn't
want it _terribly_ at home. Will you do this?"

"Yes, with pleasure," said the Squire. "I insist on your accepting ten
pounds a month--that will be one hundred and twenty a year. Now, will
you have a check, or shall I give you the money in gold and notes?"

"The gold will be the most acceptable," said Effie. "Oh, I feel so
ashamed!" she added.

"Why should you? You give us an equivalent. Besides, it makes matters
more tolerable. I cannot forget----"

"Oh, don't, Walter--don't allude to that awful time!"--cried Mrs.
Harvey.

The Squire shut up his lips. He took a little bundle of gold out of one
of his pockets and put ten sovereigns into Effie's hand.

"It is a bargain," he said. "I cannot tell you how relieved we are.
You'll be with us the morning after next? Elfreda, my love, we must tell
our little Freda what a pleasure is in store for her."

"Yes, I am more than delighted," exclaimed Mrs. Harvey. "This plan suits
me in every way. You won't fail us, Miss Staunton? for, in case Freda by
any chance has taken that awful whooping-cough, you can keep her in
isolation from the very first."

"Oh, yes!" said Effie, smiling; "but I dare say she is all right."

She shook hands with her new employers and left the house.

The gold was in her pocket. She felt that she had sold herself and her
mission in life for ten sovereigns. "It is the present need which makes
the thing so desperate," she said under her breath. "If George has drawn
all the money, they have absolutely nothing to live on; but more will
come in, and there's this to go on with. We'll manage somehow now."

She returned to the lodgings, but before she went upstairs she had an
interview with the landlady.

"What do you charge my mother for rent?" she asked.

"Well, Miss Staunton," exclaimed the woman, "with the dinners and one
thing and another, I am obliged to make it a pound a week."

"That is a great deal too much," said Effie. "I don't suppose it is too
much for your rooms, but it is more than we can afford just now. When we
first came to you, you agreed to let us the rooms without attendance for
fifteen shillings a week. We cannot by any possible management afford to
pay more."

"But Mrs. Staunton wished for attendance, miss--she said it made all the
difference; there was half a crown for attendance and half a crown extra
for kitchen fire."

"But the kitchen fire was included in the fifteen shillings a week."

"Then there wasn't late