f Sunday School girls with their teachers with the church for the
background. In the centre of the room was a round deal table about
three feet six inches across, with the legs stained red to look like
mahogany. Against one wall was an old couch covered with faded
cretonne, four chairs to match standing backs to wall in different
parts of the room. The table was covered with a red cloth with a
yellow crewel work design in the centre and in each of the four
corners, the edges being overcast in the same material. On the table
were a lamp and a number of brightly bound books.

Some of these things, as the couch and the chairs, Easton had bought
second-hand and had done up himself. The table, oilcloth, fender,
hearthrug, etc, had been obtained on the hire system and were not yet
paid for. The windows were draped with white lace curtains and in the
bay was a small bamboo table on which reposed a large Holy Bible,
cheaply but showily bound.

If anyone had ever opened this book they would have found that its
pages were as clean as the other things in the room, and on the flyleaf
might have been read the following inscription: 'To dear Ruth, from her
loving friend Mrs Starvem with the prayer that God's word may be her
guide and that Jesus may be her very own Saviour. Oct. 12. 19--'

Mrs Starvem was Ruth's former mistress, and this had been her parting
gift when Ruth left to get married. It was supposed to be a keepsake,
but as Ruth never opened the book and never willingly allowed her
thoughts to dwell upon the scenes of which it reminded her, she had
forgotten the existence of Mrs Starvem almost as completely as that
well-to-do and pious lady had forgotten hers.

For Ruth, the memory of the time she spent in the house of 'her loving
friend' was the reverse of pleasant. It comprised a series of
recollections of petty tyrannies, insults and indignities. Six years
of cruelly excessive work, beginning every morning two or three hours
before the rest of the household were awake and ceasing only when she
went exhausted to bed, late at night.

She had been what is called a 'slavey' but if she had been really a
slave her owner would have had some regard for her health and welfare:
her 'loving friend' had had none. Mrs Starvem's only thought had been
to get out of Ruth the greatest possible amount of labour and to give
her as little as possible in return.

When Ruth looked back upon that dreadful time she saw it, as on