Once again Mrs. Colebrook flushed and bit her lip.
"That will do, Susan. You forget. You're not working for Mr. Burton now. You're working for me."
"For YOU?"
"Certainly. Didn't I just pay you your wages for some weeks past?"
Susan's tight clutch on the roll of bills loosened so abruptly that the money fell to the floor. But at once Susan stooped and picked it up. The next moment she had crossed the room and thrust the money into Mrs. Colebrook's astonished fingers.
"I don't want your money, Mis' Colebrook—not on them terms, even for Keith. I know I hain't earned any the other way, yet, but I hain't tried all the magazines. There's more—lots more." Her voice faltered, and almost broke. "I'll do it yet some way, you see if I don't. But I won't take this. Why, Mis' Colebrook, do you think I'd leave NOW, with that poor boy blind, an' his father so wrought up he don't have even his extraordinary common sense about his flannels an' socks an' what to eat, an' no money to pay the bills with, either? An' him bein' pestered the life out of him with them intermittent, dunnin' grocers an' milkmen? Well, I guess not! You couldn't hire me to go, Mis' Colebrook."
"Daniel, are you going to stand there and permit me to be talked to like this?" appealed Mrs. Colebrook.
"What can I do?" (Was there a ghost of a twinkle in Daniel Burton's eyes as he turned with a shrug and a lift of his eyebrows?) "If YOU haven't the money to hire her—" But Mrs. Colebrook, with an indignant toss of her head, had left the room.
"Mr. Burton!" Before the man could speak Susan had the floor again.
"Can't you do somethin', sir? Can't you?"
"Do something, Susan?" frowned the man.