sufferings compared to those she would endure were she to return home? In
truth they were as nothing. And yet the girl longed to leave Woodview. She
had never been out of sight of home before. Amid the violences of her
stepfather there had always been her mother and the meeting-house. In
Woodview there was nothing, only Margaret, who had come to console and
persuade her to come downstairs. The resolution she had to call out of her
soul to do this exhausted her, and she went downstairs heedless of what
anyone might say.

Two and three days passed without anything occurring that might suggest
that the Fates were for or against her remaining. Mrs. Barfield continued
to be indisposed, but at the end of the week Esther, while she was at work
in the scullery, heard a new voice speaking with Mrs. Latch. This must be
Mrs. Barfield. She heard Mrs. Latch tell the story of her refusal to go to
work the evening she arrived. But Mrs. Barfield told her that she would
listen to no further complaints; this was the third kitchen-maid in four
months, and Mrs. Latch must make up her mind to bear with the faults and
failings of this last one, whatever they were. Then Mrs. Barfield called
Esther; and when she entered the kitchen she found herself face to face
with a little red-haired woman, with a pretty, pointed face.

"I hear, Waters--that is your name, I think--that you refused to obey
cook, and walked out of the kitchen the night you arrived."

"I said, ma'am, that I would wait till my box came up from the station, so
that I might change my dress. Mrs. Latch said my dress didn't matter, but
when one is poor and hasn't many dresses----"

"Are you short of clothes, then?"