Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/159

Rh she overhears us say anything which she considers funny she chuckles out loud. When visitors are in we often hear a loud guffaw from the pantry or kitchen. She says "Hey!" or "What-say?" but I like her, and would rather have her than a girl who has been trained—that is, bullied and stinted, and suspected, and watched, until she is forced to become deceitful and sly in her own defence.

Our girl has been greatly troubled lately on her father's account; he is a gardener; he has not been taking his food, and is falling away in consequence, I understand.

"He's gettin' so narrer, Mrs. Lawson," says Amy; "he's nearly as narrer as Mr. Lawson."

You know I'm rather thin.

There are plenty of young people here amongst the working-classes who have never been in London in their lives.

We haven't been troubled much by callers. I believe that when strangers settle down here people leave their cards or call on them, to see what they're like and what sort of furniture they've got in the house, and whether the wife has a tea-gown, a maid, and a tea service, and what the service and the tea-gown are like; and to go out afterwards and tell their friends all they've found out or supposed. But I got an idea. I had some cheap curtains hung up to the front window, and that scared 'em. A few factory girls and eighteen-penny to half-crown a week slaveys go along our street sometimes on a Sunday afternoon, and when they catch sight of the curtains they squeak and giggle, and say—