"You saw yourself I was engaged with a customer, and could not attend to you." "Your tone was insufferable, miss!" cried the grand lady; but what more she would have said I can not tell, for just then Miss Mortimer resumed her place in front of Mary.

She had no idea of her position in the shop, neither suspected who her assailant was, and, fearing the woman's accusation might do her an injury, felt compelled to interfere.
"Miss Marston," she said--she had just heard Mrs.Turnbull use her name--"if you should be called to account by your employer, will you, please, refer to me?
You were perfectly civil both to me and to this--" she hesitated a perceptible moment, but ended with the word "_lady_," peculiarly toned.
"Thank you, ma'am," said Mary, with a smile, "but it is of no consequence." This answer would have almost driven the woman out of her reason--already, between annoyance with herself and anger with Mary, her hue was purple: something she called her constitution required a nightly glass of brandy-and-water--but she was so dumfounded by Miss Mortimer's defense of Mary, which she looked upon as an assault on herself, so painfully aware that all hands were arrested and all eyes fixed on herself, and so mortified with the conviction that her husband was enjoying her discomfiture, that, with what haughtiness she could extemporize from consuming offense, she made a sudden vertical gyration, and walked from the vile place.
Now, George never lost a chance of recommending himself to Mary by siding with her--but only after the battle.

He came up to her now with a mean, unpleasant look, intended to represent sympathy, and, approaching his face to hers, said, confidentially: "What made my mother speak to you like that, Mary ?" "You must ask herself," she answered.
"There you are, as usual, Mary!" he protested; "you will never let a fellow take your part!" "If you wanted to take my part, you should have done so when there would have been some good in it." "How could I, before Miss Mortimer, you know!" "Then why do it now ?" "Well, you see--it's hard to bear hearing you ill used! What did you say to Miss Mortimer that angered my mother ?" His father heard him, and, taking the cue, called out in the rudest fashion: "If you think, Mary, you're going to take liberties with customers because you've got no one over you, the sooner you find you're mistaken the better." Mary made him no answer.
On her way to "the villa," Mrs.Turnbull, spurred by spite, had got hold of the same idea as George, only that she invented where he had but imagined it; and when her husband came home in the evening fell out upon him for allowing Mary to be impertinent to his customers, in whom for the first time she condescended to show an interest: "There she was, talking away to that Miss Mortimer as if she was Beenie in the kitchen! County people won't stand being treated as if one was just as good as another, I can tell you! She'll be the ruin of the business, with her fine-lady-airs! Who's she, I should like to know ?" "I shall speak to her," said the husband.

"But," he went on, "I fear you will no longer approve of marrying her to George, if you think she's an injury to the business!" "You know, as well as I do, that is the readiest way to get her out of it.

Make her marry George, and she will fall into my hands.