Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/70

58 and that wouldn't mend matters. And—well. "She ain't the first and she won't be the last." And sometimes, if the old man proves unreasonably obstinate and for an unreasonable length of time they add again, more decidedly, and somewhat impatiently, "She ain't the first and she won't be the last," and, maybe, "And, well, if it comes to that, he ought to know, or ought to remember, when he was young, or when he was courtin', is meant, I suppose. They say that old Higgins was as straight as any of 'em in his time, though I cannot believe it to look at him now. And that there was a Lizzie at his wedding. And she was Mrs. Higgins."

Lizzie went early to service, in Shepperton, and was trained under a trained servant or maid. They call them all maids. Book-keeping is included in the training, and that, with the mistress, tends to make them what they are. Their very tears seem stony, whether of vexation, sorrow, or love. And Lizzie was less sentimental than the average village girl of her class, to begin with. You've seen the girl who would sit bolt upright, hands down, while the tears of chagrin or disappointment start from eyes set in a face of stone? They are as hopeless as the dark-skinned "white" men, whose faces go grey in anger.

Lizzie kept company with a young man in Shepperton, who was "on the line, on a trine" (as Barry Pain puts it) or—"on the railway," as we'd say, and there was some talk. 'Twas said also that Lizzie's mother helped her. But Lizzie didn't mind "talk." She rather liked it. She went to London afterwards,