"Oh, ma!" spoke up the girl, entreatingly.
"It's the truth. She liked your folks well enough, but there's pleasanter families to work for."
"Fie, mother!" said Job, softly. "Let bygones be bygones."
"I am glad you spoke of it," added Mr. Royden, frankly. "My wife means to be kind, but she has a good deal to try her, and she gets fretful, now and then. I am troubled the same way, too."
"Oh, Maggie never said a word ag'in' you," rejoined Mrs. Bowen; "nor any real harm of Mrs. Royden, for that matter. But, as I said, there's pleasanter families to work for."
"Well, well!" cried Mr. Royden, desirous of getting away from the disagreeable topic, "I think, if Maggie will try it again, she will find things a little different. At any rate, she mustn't mind too much what my wife says, when she is irritated."
"I suppose you will give a dollar and a half a week, in the busy season?"
If Mr. Royden hesitated at this reasonable suggestion of the girl's mother, it was only because he knew his wife would hardly be satisfied to pay so much. But a glance around the room, in which a struggle with poverty was so easily to be seen, decided him. What was a quarter, a half, or even a dollar a week, to come out of his pocket? How much the miserable trifle might be, falling into the feeble palm of the ghastly woman, whom trouble had crushed, and who found it such a hard and wretched task to toil and keep her family together!
"I can't come until the last of the week, any way," said Maggie.
"I am sorry for that," replied Mr. Royden.