"Send him your wages. You may be quite sure that you'll find yourself provided with shoes and stockings, and the rest of it."
"And be a woluntary burden beyond what I earns! Never;—not as long as Miss Mary is coming to live here as missus of your house. I should do summat as I should have to repent of. But, Mr Whittlestaff, I've got to look the world in the face, and bear my own crosses. I never can do it no younger."
"You're an old woman now, and you talk of throwing yourself upon the world without the means of earning a shilling."
"I think I'd earn some, at something, old as I am, till I fell down flat dead," she said. "I have that sperit in me, that I'd still be doing something. But it don't signify; I'm not going to remain here when Miss Mary is to be put over me. That's the long and the short of it all."
Now had come the moment in which, if ever, Mr Whittlestaff must get the strength which he required. He was quite sure of the old woman,—that her opinion would not be in the least influenced by any desire on her own part to retain her position as his housekeeper. "I don't know about putting Miss Mary over you," he said.
"Don't know about it!" she shouted.
"My mind is not absolutely fixed."
"'As she said anything?"
"Not a word."
"Or he? Has he been and dared to speak up about Miss Mary. And he,—who, as far as I can understand, has never done a ha'porth for her since the beginning. What's Mr Gordon? I should like to know. Diamonds! What's diamonds in the way of a steady income? They're all a flash in the pan, and moonshine and dirtiness. I hates to hear of diamonds. There's all the ill in the world comes from them; and you'd give her up to be taken off by such a one as he among the diamonds! I make bold to tell you, Mr Whittlestaff, that you ought to have more strength of mind than what that comes to. You're telling me every day as I'm an old fool."