Page:Live and Let Live.djvu/16

 degree—even ours—has its peculiar advantages and temptations, and its happiness too."

"Happiness!" echoed Lee.

His wife proceeded: "I can't but hope Lucy will find hers in a faithful performance of her duties. I can truly say I have often envied servants when I have heard the merry peals of laughter in the kitchen, and known what anxious hearts there were in the parlour."

"But what is all this to the purpose! Lucy shall never live in anybody's kitchen."

"It is much to the purpose", replied Mrs. Lee, judiciously answering to the first clause of his sentence, "to settle it in our minds that Lucy may be good and happy in any position".

"But, wife, consider—recollect how you and I were brought up."

"That is what I try to forget!"

"But you ought not voluntarily to put Lucy out to service!" "Richard, you know I do not mean to reproach you; but I must say, that in our situation we have lost the power of voluntary action—we are under the stern coercion of necessity." Mrs. Lee now laid aside her work, and spoke, though with a tremulous voice, in a tone of decision she seldom assumed. "For the last week Lucy and I have lived on rye-mush. The bread you and the other children have eaten was given to us by the baker. I will not continue to subsist on his bounty while we have unemployed means of feeding ourselves. Lucy is nearly fourteen, old enough to get a place and earn wages. There will be one less to eat, and some help through this hard winter from her earnings".