A Double Knot

Five minutes later she had received the money without a word being spoken on either side, and was standing just out of sight of the cottage, by the stream, hugging the bundle to her with one hand, and gnawing at the side of her finger.

"What a fool I was!" she muttered viciously. "She'd have given double if I'd pressed her, and I'm put off now with a beggarly thirty pound a year. I've a good mind to go back."

She took a few steps in the direction of the cottage, but stopped with a grim chuckle.

"Thirty pound a year regular for doing nothing is better than ten pound and lots of work. Perhaps we should only quarrel, for she's a hard one when she's up. But I might have had more."

She stood thinking for a few moments.

"What shall I do?" she muttered. "If I leave it with them they'll kill it in a week, and then there's an end of it, and I get my money for nothing. If I fe