you should be called to account by your employer, will you,
please, refer to me? You were perfectly civil both to me and to this--"
she hesitated a perceptible moment, but ended with the word "_lady_,"
peculiarly toned.

"Thank you, ma'am," said Mary, with a smile, "but it is of no
consequence."

This answer would have almost driven the woman out of her
reason--already, between annoyance with herself and anger with Mary,
her hue was purple: something she called her constitution required a
nightly glass of brandy-and-water--but she was so dumfounded by Miss
Mortimer's defense of Mary, which she looked upon as an assault on
herself, so painfully aware that all hands were arrested and all eyes
fixed on herself, and so mortified with the conviction that her husband
was enjoying her discomfiture, that, with what haughtiness she could
extemporize from consuming offense, she made a sudden vertical
gyration, and walked from the vile place.

Now, George never lost a chance of recommending himself to Mary by
siding with her--but only after the battle. He came up to her now with
a mean, unpleasant look, intended to represent sympathy, and,
approaching his face to hers, said, confidentially:

"What made my mother speak to you like that, Mary?"

"You must ask herself," she answered.

"There you are, as usual, Mary!" he protested; "you will never let a
fellow take your part!"

"If you wanted to take my part, you should have done so when there
would have been some good in it."

"How could I, before Miss Mortimer, you know!"

"Then why do it now?"

"Well, you see--it's hard to bear hearing you ill used! What did you
say to Miss Mortimer that angered my mother?"

His father heard him, and, taking the cue, called out in the rudest
fashion:

"If you think, Mary, you're going to take liberties with customers
because you've got no one over you, the sooner you find you're mistaken
the better."

Mary made him no answer.

On her way to "the villa," Mrs. Turnbull, spurred by spite, had got
hold of the same idea as George, only that she invented where he had
but imagined it; and when her husband came home in the evening fell out
upon him for allowing Mary to be impertinent to his customers, in whom
for the first time she condescended to show an interest:

"There she was, talking away to that Miss Mortimer as if she was Beenie
in the kitchen! County people won't stand being treated as if one was
just as good as another, I can