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