"Oh! Well, let her. It's no good crying over spilt milk. Mrs. Roberts never taught me cooking, and I don't suppose she ever would if I'd stopped with her fifty years. Now, Mother, say I may give warning as soon as I go back, and let me come and help you instead of looking for another place." But Mrs. Betts shook her head. "No, no, Lizzie," she said; "your father wouldn't like it. You must try to put up with Mrs. Spencer's temper; and be careful how you do your work, and then she will not be cross with you." "You don't know her," snapped Lizzie; "nobody ever can please her. The girl next door told me as good as that the first day I went." "Very well; if you knew your mistress was hard to please you should have been more careful not to offend her. Just think of it—you have had three places in less than twelve months! The first was dull, and your mistress too particular. You would go where there was children: before you had been a month in the nursery you could not bear the fretful baby—" "Well, it was a cross little thing; you know that yourself, Mother," interrupted the girl. "Well, perhaps it was cross; but then your mistress was very kind and considerate, and you might have put up with the baby's fretfulness for a little while longer. I tell you, Lizzie, that go wherever you may, there will be something to put up with. The world isn't a bed of roses for anybody, I can tell you; and if you don't have one thing to try you, it will be another." "Yes, I daresay it will," said Lizzie, folding over the corner of the ironing-cloth; "but still I don't see why I should have to put up with strange people's tempers when I can help you at home." "But I don't want you at home," remonstrated her mother. "The little bit of washing I have got I can manage by myself, and I cannot afford to keep a great girl like you." "But you could get some more, I daresay," persisted Lizzie; "and then—" But here the talk was interrupted by the entrance of her father, and she thought it would be best not to say any more about it at present. "Where's Jack?" she asked, looking round for her brother, as her father set down his basket of tools which her brother usually carried. Mrs. Betts looked up from her ironing, too, in a questioning manner. "There's nothing wrong, is there?" she said a little anxiously. "No, no, Mother, there's nothing wrong but this: that we've only made about a couple of hours to-day between us, and Jack heard of a place that was vacant at the foundry, and so he's gone to see about it." "But you couldn't do without Jack, Father, could you?" said Lizzie. "I thought you always wanted a boy for a soldering job, and you said the other day he was getting so handy you wouldn't know what to do without him." "But I shall have to do without him if there's no work to be got," said her father with something like a growl, as he seated himself by the fire.