Her clothes were her great difficulty, and she often thought that she
would rather go back to the slavery of the house in Chelsea than bear the
humiliation of going out any longer on Sunday in the old things that the
servants had seen her in for eight or nine months or more. She was made to
feel that she was the lowest of the low--the servant of servants. She had
to accept everybody's sneer and everybody's bad language, and oftentimes
gross familiarity, in order to avoid arguments and disputes which might
endanger her situation. She had to shut her eyes to the thefts of cooks;
she had to fetch them drink, and to do their work when they were unable to
do it themselves. But there was no help for it. She could not pick and
choose where she would live, and any wages above sixteen pound a year she
must always accept, and put up with whatever inconvenience she might meet.
Hers is an heroic adventure if one considers it--a mother's fight for the
life of her child against all the forces that civilisation arrays against
the lowly and the illegitimate. She is in a situation to-day, but on what
security does she hold it? She is strangely dependent on her own health,
and still more upon the fortunes and the personal caprice of her
employers; and she realised the perils of her life when an outcast mother
at the corner of the street, stretching out of her rags a brown hand and
arm, asked alms for the sake of the little children.
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