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Saturday came. At breakfast Miss Rodney sent for the landlady, who made a timid appearance just within the room.

‘Good morning, Mrs. Turpin. What news have you for me? You know what I mean?’

The landlady took a step forward, and began babbling excuses, explanations, entreaties. She was coldly and decisively interrupted.

‘Thank you, Mrs. Turpin, that will do. A week to-day I leave.’

With a sound which was half a sob and half grunt Mrs. Turpin bounced from the room. It was now inevitable that she should report the state of things to her husband, and that evening half an hour’s circumlocution brought her to the point. Which of the two lodgers should go? The carpenter paused, pipe in mouth, before him a geometrical figure over which he had puzzled for a day or two, and about which, if he could find courage, he wished to consult the High School mistress. He reflected for five minutes, and uttered an unhesitating decision. Mr. Rawcliffe must go. Naturally, his wife broke into indignant clamour, and the debate lasted for an hour or two; but Turpin could be firm when he liked, and he had solid reasons for preferring to keep Miss Rodney in the house. At four o’clock Mrs. Turpin crept softly to the sitting-room where her offended lodger was quietly reading.

‘I wanted just to say, miss, that I’m willing to give Mr. Rawcliffe notice next Wednesday.’

‘Thank you, Mrs. Turpin,’ was the cold reply. ‘I have already taken other rooms.’

The landlady gasped, and for a moment could say nothing. Then she besought Miss Rodney to change her mind. Mr. Rawcliffe should leave, indeed he should, on Wednesday week. But Miss Rodney had only one reply; she had found other rooms that suited her, and she requested to be left in peace.

At eleven Mr. Rawcliffe came home. He was unnaturally sober, for Saturday night, and found his way into the parlour without difficulty. There in a minute or two he was confronted by his landlady and her husband: they closed the door behind them, and stood in a resolute attitude.

‘Mr. Rawcliffe,’ began Turpin, ‘you must leave these lodgings, sir, on Wednesday next.’

‘Hullo! what’s all this about?’ cried the other. ‘What do you mean, Turpin?’

The carpenter made plain his meaning; spoke of Miss Rodney’s complaint, of the irregular payment (for his wife, in her stress, had avowed everything), and of other subjects of dissatisfaction; the lodger must go, there was an end of it. Rawcliffe, putting on all his dignity, demanded the legal week’s notice; Turpin demanded the sum in arrear. There was an exchange of high words, and the interview ended with mutual defiance. A moment after Turpin and his wife knocked at Miss Rodney’s door, for she was still in her parlour. There followed a brief conversation, with the result that Miss Rodney graciously consented to remain, on the understanding that Mr. Rawcliffe left the house not later than Wednesday.

Enraged at the treatment he was receiving, Rawcliffe loudly declared that he would not budge. Turpin warned him that if he had made no preparations for departure on Wednesday he would be forcibly ejected, and the door closed against him.

‘You haven’t the right to do it,’ shouted the lodger. ‘I’ll sue you for damages.’

‘And I,’ retorted the carpenter, ‘will sue you for the money you owe me!’

The end could not be doubtful. Rawcliffe, besides being a poor creature, knew very well that it was dangerous for him to get involved in a scandal; his stepfather, upon whom he depended, asked but a fair excuse for cutting him adrift, and more than one grave warning had come from his mother during the past few months. But he enjoyed a little blustering, and even at breakfast-time on Wednesday his attitude was that of contemptuous defiance. In vain had Mrs. Turpin tried to coax him with maternal suavity; in vain had Mabel and Lily, when serving his meals, whispered abuse of Miss Rodney, and promised to find some way of getting rid of her, so that Rawcliffe might return. In a voice loud enough to be heard by his enemy in the opposite parlour, he declared that no ‘cat of a school teacher should get the better of him.’ As a matter of fact, however, he arranged on Tuesday evening to take a couple of cheaper rooms just outside the town, and ordered a cab to come for him at eleven next morning.

‘You know what the understanding is, Mr. Rawcliffe,’ said Turpin, putting his head into the room as the lodger sat at breakfast. ‘I’m a man of my word.’

‘Don’t come bawling here!’ cried the other, with a face of scorn.

And at noon the house knew him no more.

Miss Rodney, on that same day, was able to offer her landlady a new lodger. She had not spoken of this before, being resolved to triumph by mere force of will.

‘The next thing,’ she remarked to a friend, when telling the story, ‘is to pack off one of the girls into service. I shall manage it by Christmas,’ and she added with humorous complacency, ‘it does one good to be making a sort of order in one’s own little corner of the world.’