stances for what
they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in
this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they
want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

MRS WARREN. Oh, it's easy to talk, isn't it? Here! would you like to know
what _my_ circumstances were?

VIVIE. Yes: you had better tell me. Won't you sit down?

MRS WARREN. Oh, I'll sit down: don't you be afraid. [She plants her chair
farther forward with brazen energy, and sits down. Vivie is impressed in
spite of herself]. D'you know what your gran'mother was?

VIVIE. No.

MRS WARREN. No, you don't. I do. She called herself a widow and had a
fried-fish shop down by the Mint, and kept herself and four daughters
out of it. Two of us were sisters: that was me and Liz; and we were both
good-looking and well made. I suppose our father was a well-fed man:
mother pretended he was a gentleman; but I don't know. The other two
were only half sisters: undersized, ugly, starved looking, hard working,
honest poor creatures: Liz and I would have half-murdered them if
mother hadn't half-murdered us to keep our hands off them. They were the
respectable ones. Well, what did they get by their respectability? I'll
tell you. One of them worked in a whitelead factory twelve hours a day
for nine shillings a week until she died of lead poisoning. She only
expected to get her hands a little paralyzed; but she died. The other
was always held up to us as a model because she married a Government
laborer in the Deptford victualling yard, and kept his room and the
three children neat and tidy on eighteen shillings a week--until he took
to drink. That was worth being respectable for, wasn't it?

VIVIE [now thoughtfully attentive] Did you and your sister think so?

MRS WARREN. Liz didn't, I can tell you: she had more spirit. We both went
to a church school--that was part of the ladylike airs we gave ourselves
to be superior to the children that knew nothing and went nowhere--and
we stayed there until Liz went out one night and never came back. I
know the schoolmistress thought I'd soon follow her example; for
the clergyman was always warning me that Lizzie'd end by jumping off
Waterloo Bridge. Poor fool: that was all he knew about it! But I was
more afraid of the whitelead factory than I was of the river; and so
would you have been in my place. That clergyman got me a situation as
a scullery maid in a temperance restaurant where they sen