"Oh, but you don't understand. I do so like cleanliness! I have a
sort of feeling when I'm washing anything, that I'm really doing
good in the world, and the dazzling white of linen after I'd ironed
it seemed to thank me for my work."

"Yes, yes, I understand well enough," said Waymark earnestly.

"For all that I couldn't stay. I was restless. I had a foolish
notion that I should like to be with a better kind of people again
--I mean people in a higher position. I still kept answering
advertisements for a lady's maid's place, and at last I got what I
wanted. Oh yes, I got it."

She broke off' laughing bitterly, and remained silent. Waymark would
not urge her to continue. For a minute it seemed as if she would
tell no more; she looked at her watch, and half arose.

"Oh, I may as well tell you all, now I've begun," she said, falling
back again in a careless way. "You know what the end's going to be;
never mind, at all events I'll try and make you understand how it
came.

"The family I got into was a lady and her two grown-up daughters,
and a son of about five-and-twenty. They lived in a small house at
Shepherd's Bush. My wages were very small, and I soon found out that
they were a kind of people who keep up a great deal of show on very
little means. Of course I had to be let into all the secrets of
their miserable shifts for dressing well on next to nothing at all,
and they expected me--mother and daughters--to do the most