to sleep in, and any scraps are often considered good enough for a
servant girl to eat. You look as though you don't believe it, Ned. I'm
talking about what I know. The average domestic servant is treated like a
trained dog."

"Did you ever try it?"

"I went to work in a hotel as chamber maid, once. I worked from about six
in the morning till after ten at night. Then four of us girls slept in
two beds in a kind of box under the verandah stairs in the back yard. We
had to leave the window open to get air, and in the middle of the first
night a light woke me up and a man was staring through the window at us
with a match in his hand. I wanted the twelve shillings so I stood it for
a week and, then got another place."

"What sort was that?"

"Oh! A respectable place, you know. Kept up appearances and locked up the
butter. The woman said to me, when I'd brought my box, 'I'm going to call
you Mary, I always call my girls Mary.' I slept in a dark close den off
the kitchen, full of cockroaches that frightened the wits out of me. I
was afraid to eat as much as I wanted because she looked at me so. I
couldn't rest a minute but she was hunting me up to see what I was doing.
I hadn't anybody to talk with or eat with and my one night out I had to
be in by ten. I was so miserable that I went back to slop-work. That's
what Mrs. Somerville is doing."

"It isn't all honey, then. I thought town servant girls had a fair time
of it."