“We can just as well talk here as anywhere,” announced Mrs. Daggett.  “It’s quarter of an hour before dinnertime, but if you’d rather go up to the parlor we can.”

“O, dear, no!” said Martha Slawson suavely. “Any place is good enough for me.  Don’t trouble yourself.  I’m not particular where I am.”  Unbidden, she drew out a chair from its place beside one of the uninviting tables, and sat down on it deliberately.  It creaked beneath her weight.

“O—­oh!  Miss Lang!” said Mrs. Daggett, surprised, seeing her young lodger now, for the first time.

Martha nodded.  “Yes, it’s Miss Lang, an’ I brought her with me, through the turrbl storm, Mrs.—­a—?”

“Daggett,” supplied the owner of the name promptly.

“That’s right, Daggett,” repeated Martha.  “I brought Miss Lang with me, Mrs. Daggett, because I couldn’t believe my ears when she told me she was goin’ to be—­to be turned out, if she didn’t pay up to-night, weather or no.  I wanted to hear the real truth of it from you, ma’am, straight, with her by.”

Mrs. Daggett coughed.  “Well, business is business.  I’m not a capitalist.  I’m not keeping a boarding-house for my health, you know.  I can’t afford to give credit when I have to pay cash.”

“But, of course, you don’t mean you’d ackchelly refuse the young lady shelter a night like this, if she come to you, open an’ honest, an’ said she hadn’t the price by her just at present, but she would have it sooner or later, an’ then you’d be squared every cent.  You wouldn’t turn her down if she said that, would you?”

“Say, Mrs. Slawson, or whatever your name is,” broke in Mrs. Daggett sharply, “I’m not here to be cross-questioned.  When you told me you’d come on business for Miss Lang, I thought ’twas to settle what she owes.  If it ain’t—­I’m a busy woman.  I’m needed in the kitchen this minute, to see to the dishing-up.  Have the goodness to come to the point.  Is Miss Lang going to pay?  If she is, well and good.  She can keep her room.  If she isn’t—­” The accompanying gesture was eloquent.

Mrs. Slawson’s chair gave forth another whine of reproach as she settled down on it with a sort of inflexible determination that defied argument.

“So that’s your ultomato?” she inquired calmly.  “I understand you to say that if this young lady (who any one with a blind eye can see she’s quality), I understand you to say, that if she don’t pay down every cent she owes you, here an’ now, you’ll put her out, bag an’ baggage?”

“No, not bag and baggage, Mrs. Slawson,” interposed the boarding-house keeper with a wry smile, bridling with the sense that she was about to say something she considered rather neat, “I am, as you might say, holding her bag and baggage—­as security.”

“Now what do you think o’ that!” ejaculated Martha Slawson.

“It’s quite immaterial to me what anybody thinks of it,” Mrs. Daggett snapped.  “And now, if that’s all you’ve got to suggest, why, I’m sure it’s all I have, and so, the sooner we end this, the sooner I’ll be at liberty to attend to my dinner.”