"You must ask herself," she answered.
"There you are, as usual, Mary!" he protested; "you will never let a fellow take your part!"
"If you wanted to take my part, you should have done so when there would have been some good in it."
"How could I, before Miss Mortimer, you know!"
"Then why do it now?"
"Well, you see—it's hard to bear hearing you ill used! What did you say to Miss Mortimer that angered my mother?"
His father heard him, and, taking the cue, called out in the rudest fashion:
"If you think, Mary, you're going to take liberties with customers because you've got no one over you, the sooner you find you're mistaken the better."
Mary made him no answer.
On her way to "the villa," Mrs. Turnbull, spurred by spite, had got hold of the same idea as George, only that she invented where he had but imagined it; and when her husband came home in the evening fell out upon him for allowing Mary to be impertinent to his customers, in whom for the first time she condescended to show an interest: