"Worth what you get for it?" she asked.
"What do I get?" he inquired.
"Her!" she answered emphatically.
"If you suppose," he said, with an appearance of confidence which was utterly false, "that Miss Blanchard will forget Mr. Wayne, you are quite mistaken."
"You are right," said Miss Cynthia, "she never will forget him." Her cousin's heart sank. "She thinks of him every day" (Miss Cynthia was watching him, and made a purposeful pause) "as something that she has escaped from. And now the way is open for a man that is a man!" Then she smiled as she noted his relief.
The way was indeed open, and the two were progressing along it very fast, when suddenly a position was offered to Beth. Old Mrs. Grimstone had, for the twelfth time, lost her attendant, and some one recommended the younger Miss Blanchard. It was a handsome offer that the old lady made; money was nothing to her, and she had learned that she must pay high for such service as she demanded. For she was, notoriously, the most exacting, crabbed, fractious old woman that ever wore false teeth, and any one who attended her lived a dog's life. Pease was utterly dismayed, and came to Judith to beg her to prevent this calamity.
"But what can I do?" she asked. "Mrs. Grimstone offers a hundred dollars a month—much more than any one else ever pays. How can Beth refuse?"
"Think," Pease adjured her, "of what she will have to bear!"
"I think her disposition is equal to it," Judith said.
"Oh, I don't doubt that," he hurriedly explained. "But Mrs. Grimstone is so rough!"