Her sister’s health began to fail.  The housework of the large family became too much for her, and the brave maid-of-all-work, accompanied by Emma Jane, was obliged to return to London.  They sought the advice of that dissenting minister whose shirt-fronts, if ever they showed a blister, had been so frightful a terror to Emma Jane’s poor mother.  By the great kindness of this good man—­his wisdom is not my concern—–­ the invalid maid-of-all-work and the indefatigable dwarf who had been like a little servant, and who has already confessed to us that she is not much of a writer herself—­were established in Blackfriars as schoolmistresses!

“We hired a little room—­in Green-street, it was—­me and my sister, and we had a few little scholars—­oh, yuss, and a tidy lot of good-sized boys and girls, besides the little ’uns—­and they paid us 6d., 4d., and 2d. a week, or whatever they liked; and we done werry well with that school, and always taught religion and the catechism; and I might have been continuin’ of it now if that nasty, pokin’, competitionin’ Board School hadn’t come along, which it finished our little lot—­pretty sharp it did—­and left us starvin’.”

The sister, shortly after this terrific crisis in their affairs, was carried into the hospital, and, after three months of terrible pain, which she bore like a martyr, went to join in heavenly places the “poor mother” and the father who had been in some elusive fashion connected with sublunary drains.

“And after that,” says Miss Stipp, getting up and resting her hands on the pail of dirty water, and looking down into it as if she saw the faces of her poor mother, her sister, and all the dead babies of the other sister shining up at her from the muddy bottom, “I came on the parish, and I’ve been on it ever since, and nice kind gentlemen they are, and I couldn’t be treated better.”

“People are kind to you?” I inquire.

“Very kind to me they are,” she answers.  “I often get a shillin’ given to me in the street, and the other evenin’ a lady in the Boro’—­nicely dressed, she was, in black—­asked me if I wouldn’t like a New Testament, and I said, ‘Yuss, I would,’ and she give me one; and I told her that I was converted, not when I was born, but when I was confirmed in St. George’s Church; and the bishop gave us a beautiful address he did, and I felt werry much better when he laid his hands on my head, and after he give us the blessin’.  If my hands wasn’t so black, I’d show you the cards and things.  I’ve kep ’em ever since—­yuss.  I’ve still got ’The Vow Performed,’ or whatever it is called.  The wicked woman downstairs, she hasn’t taken that.  Oh, a wicked woman she is, a very wicked woman; but I’ll have the law on her.  Ah!”

* * * * *

I ask her if—­what with the cat and the woman downstairs, and all her relatives in heaven—­she does not sometimes sigh for the next world.