"Gentlemen, this hussy has attempted to rob me of my property! I gave her stuff sufficient to make five shirts, and she's spoilt 'em so I can't sell 'em for old rags, and—and she won't give 'em up."
"If they ain't good for nothing, what d'ye want with 'em?" remarked the foremost of the spectators.
But Grabb was determined to bring matters to a crisis.
"Now, look here," he said, holding the yardstick in front of the girl, and thus imprisoning her in the corner; "if you don't give 'em up, I'll strip the clothes from your back."
The girl turned scarlet in the face; her arms sank slowly to her side; the bundle fell from her hands; she burst into tears.
"Shame! shame!" cried one of the spectators.
"It's the way he does business," added a voice in the background. "He won't give out any work unless the girl, who applies for it, places some money in his hands as a pledge. When the work is brought into the store, he pretends that it's spoilt, and keeps the money. That's the way he raises capital!"
"What's that you say?" cried Grabb, turning fiercely on the crowd, who had advanced some one or two paces into the store. "Who said that?"
A man in a coarse, brown bang-up advanced from the crowd—
"I said it, and I'll stand to it! Ain't you a purty specimen of a bald-headed Christian, to try and cheat the poor girl out of her hard-airned money?"