"Were three girls and two boys. Jim has gone to Canada, and George is on the railway, and both my sisters are married, one in the country, and one in Yorkshire. I'm the youngest." "Did you go to school?" "Oh! yes. Jackson Street, but I left when I was fourteen to go into a shop. That was sitting still all day and stitching, or standing all day behind a counter with women coming in and getting narked----" "Getting what?" "Narked--cross-like." "I see. So you didn't care about that?" "No. There is something in me here"--she laid her hand on her bosom--"that goes hot and hard when I'm not treated fair, and then I don't care a brass farthing what 'appens." She was too excited as she thought of her old wrongs to correct the last dropped aitch, though she realized it and bit her lip. "I been in service three years now, and I've been in four places. I've had enough." "And what now?" "I shall stop 'ere as long as you do." Something in her tone, a greater huskiness, perhaps, surprised him, and he looked up at her and met her eyes full. He was confused and amazed and startled, and his heart grew big within him, but he could not turn away. In her expression there was a mingling of fierce strength, defiance, and that helplessness which had originally overcome him and led to his undoing. He was frightened, but deliciously, so that he liked it. "I didn't know," she said, "that uncle drank. Father drank, too. There was a lot in our street that did. I'm not frightened of many things, but I am of that." He resented the topic on her lips and, by way of changing the subject, suggested that she should read. She turned to her book and read aloud the first five pages in a queer, strained, high-pitched voice that he knew for a product of the Board School, where every variance of the process called education is a kind of stiff drill. When she came to the end of a paragraph he took the book and read to her, and she listened raptly, for his diction was good. After he had come to the end of the first chapter she asked for the book again and produced a rather mincing but wonderfully accurate copy of his manner. She did not wait for his comment but banged the book shut, threw it on the bed, and said: "That's better. I knew I could do it. I knew I was clever. . . . You'll stop 'ere for a bit when you're better. You mustn't mind uncle. I'll be awfully nice to you, I will. I'll be a servant to you and make you comfortable, and I won't ask for no wages. . . ." "My dear child," replied Old Mole, "you can't possibly have enjoyed it more than I." She was eager on that. "Did you really, really like it?" "I did really."