g cough, they sent jelly and oranges
and I don't know what. I don't understand how you can want to behave
so badly to them, Carrie."

"Oh, I've not forgotten all that!" said Carrie, working herself up into
a defiant rage because she wanted to feel a counter-irritant to a
secret uneasiness which lurked at the bottom of her mind. "But spare
food and old clothes ought not to buy a girl, body and soul. Anyway, I
price myself higher than that. I'm not going to sacrifice a job I
fancy, and thirty shillings a week, to be general servant to those two
old women, and that's flat."

"But the ticket-collecting only lasts until the end of September,"
urged Mrs. Creddle, flushed and perturbed. "What shall you do then?"

"I don't know," said Caroline. "I mean to learn typewriting and
shorthand somehow, and then I shall be a clerk."

"Clerk indeed!" cried Mrs. Creddle, losing her temper. "And what does
that lead to, I should like to know? No girl clerk earns enough to buy
food and lodging such as you would get at Miss Wilson's. I don't
understand where the charm comes in, I'm sure, unless you want to be
considered a lady. But you aren't one--and you'll never be one--though
you do go out every morning and come back at night, and have a leather
bag and a powdered nose instead of a cap and apron."

"Then I can tell you," said Caroline, pale and bright-eyed. "The charm
is freedom. I'd starve before I'd ask permission to go to the
pillar-box, and spend my nights in that old kitchen by myself."

"You know perfectly well that Miss Ethel would let you go out nearly
every night," ejaculated Mrs. Creddle. "You're talking just for the
sake of talking." Then she suddenly began to cry. "I can't bear for
one of mine to behave like that--and I've always looked on you as my
own child," she said, whimpering through a corner of her apron. "I've
been poor all my life, but my word's been my bond. I never behaved
shabby nor dishonourable to anybody that I knows on."

"I'm sorry, Aunt," said Caroline, flushing with distressful impatience.
"But you have to think of yourself in these days, or get left. It's
the rule all over the world now. And if everybody did the same, we
should be all all right. Don't you see?"

Mrs. Creddle shook her head. "It might work out all right if the
pushing-est sort was always the best," she said. Then, after a pause,
she added, turning back towards the stairs: "Well, you may go and tell
them yoursel