"
"Do as you like; it is your business, not mine. It doesn't matter to me,
so long as I'm not interfered with; keep her if you like. You ought to
have looked into her character more closely before you engaged her. I
think that the lady who recommended her ought to be written to very
sharply."
They had forgotten to close the door, and Esther stood in the passage
burning and choking with shame.
"It is a strange thing that religion should make some people so
unfeeling," Esther thought as she left Onslow Square.
It was necessary to keep her child secret, and in her next situation she
shunned intimacy with her fellow-servants, and was so strict in her
conduct that she exposed herself to their sneers. She dreaded the remark
that she always went out alone, and often arrived at the cottage
breathless with fear and expectation--at a cottage where a little boy
stood by a stout middle-aged woman, turning over the pages of the
illustrated papers that his mother had brought him; she had no money to
buy him toys. Dropping the Illustrated London News, he cried, "Here is
Mummie," and ran to her with outstretched arms. Ah, what an embrace! Mrs.
Lewis continued her sewing, and for an hour or more Esther told about her
fellow-servants, about the people she lived with, the conversation
interrupted by the child calling his mother's attention to the pictures,
or by the delicate intrusion of his little hand into hers.
Pages:
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249