aundry nearly six months, and became
quite clever in getting up linen. Now this was a kind of work I liked.
You can't think what a pleasure it was to me to see shirts and collars
turning out so spotless and sweet--"

Waymark laughed.

"Oh, but you don't understand. I do so like cleanliness! I have a sort
of feeling when I'm washing anything, that I'm really doing good in the
world, and the dazzling white of linen after I'd ironed it seemed to
thank me for my work."

"Yes, yes, I understand well enough," said Waymark earnestly.

"For all that I couldn't stay. I was restless. I had a foolish notion
that I should like to be with a better kind of people again--I mean
people in a higher position. I still kept answering advertisements for
a lady's maid's place, and at last I got what I wanted. Oh yes, I got
it."

She broke off' laughing bitterly, and remained silent. Waymark would
not urge her to continue. For a minute it seemed as if she would tell
no more; she looked at her watch, and half arose.

"Oh, I may as well tell you all, now I've begun," she said, falling
back again in a careless way. "You know what the end's going to be;
never mind, at all events I'll try and make you understand how it came.

"The family I got into was a lady and her two grown-up daughters, and a
son of about five-and-twenty. They lived in a small house at Shepherd's
Bush. My wages were very small, and I soon found out that they were a
kind of people who keep up a great deal of show on very little means.
Of course I had to be let into all the secrets of their miserable
shifts for dressing well on next to nothing at all, and they expected
me--mother and daughters--to do the most wonderful and impossible
things. I had to turn old rags into smart new costumes, to trim
worn-out hats into all manner of gaudy shapes, even to patch up boots
in a way you couldn't imagine. And they used to send me with money to
buy things they were ashamed to go and buy themselves; then, if I
hadn't laid out their few pence with marvellous result, they all but
accused me of having used some of the money for myself. I had
fortunately learnt a great deal with the old lady in Tottenham, or I
couldn't have satisfied them for a day. I'm sure I did what few people
could have done, and for all that they treated me from almost the first
very badly. I had to be housemaid as well as lady's maid; the slavery
left me every night worn out with exhaustion. And I hadn't even enou