“My business is minding other people’s,” said Miss Allyn, smiling; “or, in other words I am a newspaper reporter.”
“Oh! oh!” gasped Mrs. Garvin, almost shaking in her shoes. “So you’ve been spying on my boarders while you lived in my house! Oh, it’s a nice business, that! A sneaking, prying occupation!”
“It pays,” said Miss Allyn, with a shrug of her shoulders, “but come on, old lady, pony up that eight dollars. You don’t want me filling up my paper with what I know about you, do you?”
“You don’t dare!”
Mrs. Garvin made her last effort to frighten her boarder, but a contemptuous glance was Miss Allyn’s only answer.
“We will not go one step until we get it,” said Marion, calmly. “So you can take your choice, Mrs. Garvin, it is a week’s board or our money back.”
“Well, take it and get out!” cried the woman furiously, as she drew some bills from her pocket and flung them at Marion.
Miss Allyn picked them up and counted them carefully.
“We will go together,” she said a minute later, when Mrs. Garvin had slammed the door and gone off fuming with anger.
“What, you will leave this house because of her ill treatment of us! Oh, Miss Allyn, don’t think of it! It will give you too much trouble!”