“Tell Mrs. Partridge to come up and see me.”

My thoughts and feelings were changing.  By the time the washerwoman came in, my interest in her was alive again.

“Sit down,” said I, to the tired-looking creature who sank into a chair, evidently much wearied.

“It’s hard work, Mrs. Partridge,” said I.

“Yes, ma’am, it is rather hard.  But I am thankful for health and strength to enable me to go through with it.  I know some poor women who have to work as hard as I do, and yet do not know what it is to feel well for an hour at a time.”

“Poor creatures!” said I.  “It is very hard!  How in the world can they do it?”

“We can do a great deal, ma’am, when it comes the pinch; and it is much pleasanter to do, I find, than to think about it.  If I were to think much I should give up in despair.  But I pray the Lord each morning to give me my daily bread, and thus far he has done it, and will, I am sure, continue to do it to the end.”

“Happy it is for you that you can so think and feel,” I replied.  “But I am sure I could not be as you are, Mrs. Partridge.  It would kill me.”

“I sincerely trust, ma’am, that you will never be called to pass through what I have,” said Mrs. Partridge.  “And yet there are those who have it still harder.  There was a time when the thought of being as poor as I now am, and of having to work so hard, would have been terrible to me; and yet I do not know that I was so very much happier then than I am now, though I confess I ought to have been.  I had full and plenty of every thing brought into the house by my husband, and had only to dispense in my family the blessings of God sent to us.  But I let things annoy me then more than they do now.”

“But how can you help being worried, Mrs. Partridge?  To be away from my children as you have been away from yours all day would set me wild.  I would be sure some of them would be killed or dreadfully hurt.”

“Children are wonderfully protected,” said Mrs. Partridge, in a confident voice.

“So they are.  But to think of four little children, the youngest eleven months and the oldest not ten years old, left all alone, for a whole day!”

“It is bad when we think about it, I know,” returned Mrs. Partridge.  “It looks very bad!  But I try and put that view of it out of my mind.  When I leave them in the morning they say they will be good children.  At dinner time I sometimes find them all fast asleep or playing about.  I never find them crying, or at all unhappy.  Jane loves the younger ones, and keeps them pleased all the time.  In the evening, when I get back from my work, there is generally no one awake but Jane.  She has given them the bread and milk I left for their suppers, and undressed and put them to bed.”

“Dear little girl!  What a treasure she must be!” I could not help saying.

“She is, indeed.  I don’t see how I could get along without her.”