“Well you may ask!” snapped Mrs. Lang bitterly.  “He’s kept.  I do the work, and he finds that more to his taste.  I’ve got the house full of lodgers, and I can tell you it takes me all my time, and more, to look after them.  I never get any pleasure, and your father never gets any work, and he thinks that is just as it should be.”

Jessie stood for a moment looking very thoughtful.  Everything in this house seemed to her wrong.  Just as it all used to be in her old home before she went to her grandfather’s; but she knew nothing better then, she was too young.  Now she was older and better able to understand, for she had had a long and happy experience of what a home could and should be, where each did a share, and thought always of others first.  She felt suddenly a great pity for her stepmother, and a liking such as she had not thought possible an hour or so ago.  Perhaps she could do something, she thought, to make her less unhappy; at any rate she could help her.

“I will help you,” she said, looking up at her with a smile.  “It won’t be so hard with two of us to see to things.”

Mrs. Lang’s face softened a little, and a smile actually gleamed in her eyes as she glanced from the frying-pan to Jessie.  “Yes, you can help a bit, I expect, you seem to know how to set about things.  Did you help your grandmother?”

“Oh yes, a lot,” said Jessie, and at the recollection the tears brimmed up in her eyes.  “I wonder how she is, and how granp is!  Oh, I expect he was in a dreadful way when he came home, and heard what had happened!” and at the thought poor Jessie’s tears overflowed, and she sobbed bitterly.

“Hush, don’t make that noise,” said her stepmother quickly, but not unkindly.  “Be quiet, child, your father’s coming, and he’ll beat you if you go on like that.  Oh, it’s you, Tom,” as a young man lounged heavily into the kitchen, “I thought ’twas Harry.”

Tom Salter dropped into a chair by the table with a tired yawn.  “Yes, it’s me; I’m up, but I ain’t awake,” he said, with a laugh.  “Hullo,” as he caught sight of Jessie, “is this the little girl you was telling me about?”

“Yes, this is Jessie.”

He looked at Jessie and smiled, and she smiled back.  He had a good-tempered face and kind eyes, and she thought she should like him.

“Bit tired, I expect?”

“Yes, thank you, I am,” said Jessie shyly.

“Hullo, missis, been having a spring clean?” he asked comically, as he glanced about him.  “The place looks so tidy I hardly knew it.”

Mrs. Lang looked half annoyed.  “New brooms sweep clean,” she said shortly, “and two pairs of hands can do what one can’t.”

“That’s true,” said the young man soothingly.  “I don’t know how you ever managed to get through it all by yourself.”

Mrs. Lang looked mollified.  “It would have been all right if Harry would have lent a hand now and then,” she said, “but he won’t even clean his own boots, let alone any one else’s; while as for bringing in a scuttle of coal, or going an errand, or putting a spade near the garden, he’d think himself disgraced for ever if he did either.  Disgraced!  He!” with a bitter laugh, and the meaning in her voice should have made her self-satisfied husband feel very small—­if anything could have that effect on him.