a
prizefighter's.

"We'll discuss it when you're sober," he made haste to say, trying to
wink amiably.

"So help me Mike, I haven't touched a----" she began, but caught
herself in time. "So yez discharge me, do yez?" she shouted.

"I understood you had quit, anyway."

"Well, me fine little man, I'll see yez further before I'll quit now.
I came back this minute to give notice, but I wouldn't do it now for
twenty-five dollars."

"You don't have to give notice. You're discharged. Good-bye." He
started for the sitting-room.

She slapped the dining-table with one of her big hands. The dishes
bounced into the air, and so did he.

"I'll give this much notice to yez," she roared, "and ye'll bear it in
mind as long as yez stay in the same house wid me. I don't take no
orders from the likes of you. I was employed by Miss Duluth. I cook
for her, I get me pay from her, and I'll not be fired by anybody but
her. Do yez get that? I'd as soon take orders from the kid as from
you, ye little pinhead. Who are yez anyhow? Ye're nobody. Begorry, I
don't even know yer name. Discharge me! Phy, phy, ye couldn't
discharge a firecracker. What's that?"

"I--I didn't say anything," he gasped.

"Ye'd better not."

"I shall speak to--to Miss Duluth about this," he muttered, very red
in the face.

"Do!" she advised, sarcastically. "She'll tell yez to mind yer own
business, the same as I do. The idee! Talkin' about firing me! Fer the
love av Mike, Annie, what do yez think av the nerve? Phy Miss Duluth
kapes him on the place I can't fer the life av me see. She's that
tinder-hearted she----"

But he had bolted through the door, slamming it after him. As he
reached the bottom of the stairs leading to his bedroom the door
opened again and Annie called out to him:--

"Are you through lunch, sir?"

He was halfway up the steps before he could frame an answer. Tears of
rage and humiliation were in his baby-blue eyes.

"Tell her to go to the devil," he sputtered.

As he disappeared at the bend in the stairs he distinctly heard Annie
say:--

"I can see myself doing it--not."

For an hour he paced the floor of his little bed-chamber, fuming and
swearing to himself in a mild, impotent fashion--and in some dread of
the door. Such words and sentences as these fell from his
lips:--"Nobody!" "Keeps me on the place!" "Because she's
tender-hearted!" "I will fire her!" "Can't talk back to me!" "Damned
Irisher!" And so on and so forth until he