on jumped down her throat.

"Hold your silly tongue. Don't talk to me. I--the smelling salts! Quick,
you slut, or I'll faint," screamed the lady.

No one could look less like fainting than did Mrs. Fenton, and so Betty
thought, but she kept her thoughts to herself and fetched the restorer
at which her mistress vigorously sniffed, after sinking, seemingly
prostrate, into a chair. Then she fell to fanning her hot face with her
apron, now and again relieving her feelings with language quite
appropriate to the neighbourhood of the Old Bailey.

Meanwhile Hannah wisely kept aloof and only went to the kitchen when
necessary to execute her customers' orders. Directly the fainting lady
inside saw the waitress she revived.

"What's this about Lavinia? Tell me. Everything mind," she cried.

"What I don't know I can't tell, mistress. Ask her yourself," returned
Hannah.

"Don't try to bamboozle me. You _do_ know."

"I say I don't. I found her outside more dead than alive, and I brought
her in. I wasn't going to let her be and all the scum of Newgate about."

"Oh, that was it. And pray how did you come to learn she was outside?"

"Because she'd looked in at the door a minute afore and was afeared to
come in 'cause of you, mistress. Give me that dish o' bacon, Betty. The
man who saw his breakfast tumbling on the floor is in a sad pother."

This was a shot for Mrs. Fenton. Hannah rarely sought to have words with
her mistress, but when she did she stood up to her boldly. Mrs. Fenton
was discomfited and Hannah, snatching the dish Betty handed to her,
vanished to appease the hungry customer, leaving the angry woman to chew
over her wrath as best she might.

Mrs. Fenton gradually cooled down. In half an hour's time the market
would be in full swing and most of her customers would be gone. Though
she was dying to know what had brought her daughter home, the story
would not spoil by keeping. Besides, though she was in a pet with
Dobson, she did not want to give him offence and she tried to make
amends for her angry outburst by bestowing upon him extra graciousness.

Before long Hannah was quite able to attend single-handed to the few
lingerers, and Mrs. Fenton went upstairs, eager to empty her vial of
suppressed temper on "that chit," as she generally called Lavinia.

She entered her own bedroom expecting to find the girl there, but
Lavinia had no fancy for invading her mother's domains and had gone into
the garret where Hannah