"Thank you," was the suave answer, "I was not thinking much about the change. If you will buy yourself a new bonnet with it, you will be conferring a favour upon me."
"And what favour will you want back?" asked Mattie, quickly.
"Oh! I will leave that to time and your kindness—come, will you take it and be friends with me? I want a friend in this quarter very much."
He pushed the silver and the cumbrous packet of coppers towards her. He was inclined to be liberal. He remembered how many he had dazzled in his time by his profuse munificence. Money he had never studied in his life, and by the strange rule of contraries, he had had plenty of it.
Mattie was impulsive—even passionate, and the effort to corrupt her allegiance to the Wesdens fired her blood to a degree that she even wondered at herself shortly afterwards.
"Take yourself out of this shop, you bad man," she cried, "and your trumpery change too! Be off with you before I call a policeman, or throw something at you—you great big coward, to be always coming here insulting us!"
With her impatient hands she swept the money off the counter, five-shilling packet of coppers and all, which fell with a crash, and disgorged its contents on the floor.
"What—what do you mean?" stammered the prowler.
"I mean that it's no good you're coming here, and that nobody wants to see you here again, and that I'll set the policeman on you next time you give me any of your impudence. Get out with you, you coward!"
Mattie thought her one threat of a policeman sufficient; she had still a great reverence for that official personage, and believed that his very name must strike terror to guilty hearts. The effect upon her auditor led her to believe that she had been successful; but he was only alarmed at Mattie's loud voice, and the stoppage of two boys and a woman at the door.