"'I sees you are idlin' with a strange young man,' I says.
"Then she turns upon me quite angry like. 'You go on, and mind your own business. I ain't a-goin' to walk out with you no more.'
"And then she laughed and he laughed, and I says, 'You mean to break our friendship, Ellen?'
"And she nodded; and then I come on home with a broken 'eart. He be a stranger 'm, come to help Mr. Webster with his bay; and Ellen is on with him, and off with me. I couldn't have believed she would have laughed at me—I couldn't indeed; and all our years to come—hers and mine—are no good at all now. And she don't love me no more. I h'ain't got one friend in the whole big world, and, please 'm, I didn't think Ellen would have done it!"
"Oh, well, Peggy, it isn't so bad. Cheer up! The young man will go away, and Ellen will come back to you."
"Never 'm, never! I shouldn't arsk her to. I couldn't never trust her agen."
"Well, Ellen is no great loss. There are other girls in the world quite as nice as she."
"THEN I COME HOME WITH A BROKEN 'EART."
"But I were a-bringin' of her on so," sobbed Peggy. "I couldn't never make friends with no one else. She were a servant-maid just like me, and we had points in common, and we could talk our missuses over, and what we had for dinner, and the trouble the oving giv' us, and the cat and dogs, and the mice, oh! Please 'm, I couldn't find another Ellen, and she have broke my 'eart, she have!"