t bear to see long faces
about him, especially after a hard day's work!

"In a few days I secured another place, this time in a middle-class
family. I remained there nearly a year and was considered by my mistress
a model of willingness, patience, endurance, gentleness, and all the
other slavish virtues. I never spoke except when spoken to and then I
answered so respectfully! The children might kick and abuse me in any
way they chose without any show of resentment from me. This my mistress
noticed and duly commended. 'Those dear children,' she said. 'You know
they do not realise what they are about, and so one ought not to be
harsh to the dear pets.'

"I gave up reading books and even newspapers; partly I suppose because I
had for the time satiated myself, especially with sentimental and trashy
novels, and had not yet learned to know real literature, and partly
because, in my state of humility, I listened to my mistress when she
said reading took too much time, that it was better to sew, dust, and
the like, when I was not busy with the children. Everything I do, I must
do passionately, it seems, even to being a slave. I gave up dances, too,
and on my days out dutifully visited my parents. I had no friends or
companions and was in all respects what one calls a perfect servant--so
perfect that the friends of my mistress quite envied her the possession
of so useful a slave.

"I got pleasure out of doing the thing so thoroughly; but yet it would
not have been so interesting to me if it had not been painful, too. I
was enough of a sport to want as much depth of experience, while it
lasted, in that direction as in any other--in spite of, perhaps partly
because of, the pain. And what pain it was, at times! Who knows of the
bitter hatred surging in my heart, of the long nights spent in tears, of
the terrible mental tortures I endured! Sometimes it was as if an iron
hand were squeezing my heart so that I almost died; sometimes as if a
great lump of stone lay on my chest. And my mistress seemed each day
somehow to make the iron hand squeeze tighter and tighter and the stone
weigh heavier and heavier. If she had only known what a deadly hatred I
bore her--a hatred that would not have been so severe if I had not been
so good a servant--had given myself rope, had satisfied my emotions! If
she had understood that my calm, modest bearing was only a mask which
hid a passionate soul keenly alive to the suffering inflicted on me, she