"I know that.... But we can't have loose women about the place. They all can tell a fine story; the world is full of impostors." "I don't think the girl is an impostor." "Very likely not, but everyone has a right to protect themselves." "Don't speak so loud, Harold," said Mrs. Trubner, lowering her voice. "Remember her child is dependent upon her; if we send her away we don't know what may happen. I'll pay her a month's wages if you like, but you must take the responsibility." "I won't take any responsibility in the matter. If she had been here two years--she has only been here a year--not so much more--and had proved a satisfactory servant, I don't say that we'd be justified in sending her away.... There are plenty of good girls who want a situation as much as she. I don't see why we should harbour loose women when there are so many deserving cases." "Then you want me to send her away?" "I don't want to interfere; you ought to know how to act. Supposing the same thing were to happen again? My cousins, young men, coming to the house--" "But she won't see them." "Do as you like; it is your business, not mine. It doesn't matter to me, so long as I'm not interfered with; keep her if you like. You ought to have looked into her character more closely before you engaged her. I think that the lady who recommended her ought to be written to very sharply." They had forgotten to close the door, and Esther stood in the passage burning and choking with shame. "It is a strange thing that religion should make some people so unfeeling," Esther thought as she left Onslow Square. It was necessary to keep her child secret, and in her next situation she shunned intimacy with her fellow-servants, and was so strict in her conduct that she exposed herself to their sneers. She dreaded the remark that she always went out alone, and often arrived at the cottage breathless with fear and expectation--at a cottage where a little boy stood by a stout middle-aged woman, turning over the pages of the illustrated papers that his mother had brought him; she had no money to buy him toys. Dropping the Illustrated London News, he cried, "Here is Mummie," and ran to her with outstretched arms. Ah, what an embrace! Mrs. Lewis continued her sewing, and for an hour or more Esther told about her fellow-servants, about the people she lived with, the conversation interrupted by the child calling his mother's attention to the pictures, or by the delicate intrusion of his little hand into hers.