“Miss Devon, to-day is Saturday, and I’m makin’ up my bills, so I’ll trouble you for your month’s board, and as much on the old account as you can let me have.”

Mrs. Flint spoke, and her sharp voice rasped the silence like a file, for she had entered without knocking, and her demand was the first intimation of her presence.

Christie turned slowly round, for there was no elasticity in her motions now; through the melancholy anxiety her face always wore of late, there came the worried look of one driven almost beyond endurance, and her hands began to tremble nervously as she tied on her bonnet.  Mrs. Flint was a hard woman, and dunned her debtors relentlessly; Christie dreaded the sight of her, and would have left the house had she been free of debt.

“I am just going to take these things home and get more work.  I am sure of being paid, and you shall have all I get.  But, for Heaven’s sake, give me time.”

Two days and a night of almost uninterrupted labor had given a severe strain to her nerves, and left her in a dangerous state.  Something in her face arrested Mrs. Flint’s attention; she observed that Christie was putting on her best cloak and hat, and to her suspicious eye the bundle of work looked unduly large.

It had been a hard day for the poor woman, for the cook had gone off in a huff; the chamber girl been detected in petty larceny; two desirable boarders had disappointed her; and the incapable husband had fallen ill, so it was little wonder that her soul was tried, her sharp voice sharper, and her sour temper sourer than ever.

“I have heard of folks putting on their best things and going out, but never coming back again, when they owed money.  It’s a mean trick, but it’s sometimes done by them you wouldn’t think it of,” she said, with an aggravating sniff of intelligence.

To be suspected of dishonesty was the last drop in Christie’s full cup.  She looked at the woman with a strong desire to do something violent, for every nerve was tingling with irritation and anger.  But she controlled herself, though her face was colorless and her hands were more tremulous than before.  Unfastening her comfortable cloak she replaced it with a shabby shawl; took off her neat bonnet and put on a hood, unfolded six linen shirts, and shook them out before her landlady’s eyes; then retied the parcel, and, pausing on the threshold of the door, looked back with an expression that haunted the woman long afterward, as she said, with the quiver of strong excitement in her voice: 

“Mrs. Flint, I have always dealt honorably by you; I always mean to do it, and don’t deserve to be suspected of dishonesty like that.  I leave every thing I own behind me, and if I don’t come back, you can sell them all and pay yourself, for I feel now as if I never wanted to see you or this room again.”