“So I had a letter wrote,” she says, getting up to scrub the hearthstone, a feat she performs without kneeling, for the merest forward tilt of her body brings her hands upon the floor.  “Yuss, I had a letter wrote, for I’m not much of a writer myself, I ain’t—­a letter wrote to my other sister what was out in service in the country, down Brockley way, and then I went to live with her.”

“In the house where she was a servant?” I inquire.

“Yuss.  That was it.  I went to live with her.  I was like a little servant.  Blacked the boots, peeled the pertaters, washed the dishes, cleaned the grates, scrubbed the door-step, polished here, polished there, helped to dish up, and they give me two shillin’s a week.  I was like a little servant.”

I remind her of her promise to forgo work and to be a little social, and, after another rub or two, she wrings out the sopping cloth, lets it drop on the hearthstone, and then, backing once more to the stool, leans back and smiles at me, with her wet hands folded in her lap.

* * * * *

“The fam’ly where my sister lived in the country,” she says, taking up her tale, “was a large family—­five or six sons there was—­sich nice fellers they were!  But—­ain’t it strange?—­I never see any think on ’em now though they come reggeler to London Bridge every day of their lives, they do.  They was Roman Cawtholic—­boys and girls alike; but, for all that, they was good-livin’ people, and they was religious in their own way.  And one day a week comes the priest, and that day me and my sister wasn’t allowed to enter the dinin’-room all the mornin’, where the breakfast things was and where the priest was what he useter call confessin’ the young ladies of their sins and givin’ ’em what he called absolution, summat like that, for all they’d been doin’ wrong since last time.  Oh my!  You never knew such goings on, not in England, you didn’t.  But mind, they was good-livin’ people.  They was Cawtholics, and they give me two shillin’s a week; and I was like a little servant.  Kind, good, religious people they was; and the beetles and the crickets in the house was somethink beastly.  Oh, I do hate they nasty stinkin’ things; hate ’em I do!  And they had a garden, a beautiful garden, and it was full of flowers it was, but I don’t remember the names of them, excep’ that I know it was full of flowers—­all the colours you can think of—­and that garden was a god to them poor Cawtholics, it really was.  The boys worked in it before they went to the City, and the young ladies messed about with it all day; and then they all went chipping and choppin’ in it of a evenin’, and me and my sister wasn’t hardly allowed to look at the flowers, we wasn’t, for it was like a god to them.”