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
wonderful and impossible things. I had to turn old rags into smart
new costumes, to trim worn-out hats into all manner of gaudy shapes,
even to patch up boots in a way you couldn't imagine. And they used
to send me with money to buy things they were ashamed to go and buy
themselves; then, if I hadn't laid out their few pence with
marvellous result, they all but accused me of having used some of
the money for myself.
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