“Why, what can you earn?” says she; “what can you get at your work?”
“Threepence,” said I, “when I spin, and fourpence when I work plain work.”
“Alas! poor gentlewoman,” said she again, laughing, “what will that do for thee?”
“It will keep me,” says I, “if you will let me live with you.” And this I said in such a poor petitioning tone, that it made the poor woman’s heart yearn to me, as she told me afterwards.
“But,” says she, “that will not keep you and buy you clothes too; and who must buy the little gentlewoman clothes?” says she, and smiled all the while at me.
“I will work harder, then,” says I, “and you shall have it all.”
“Poor child! it won’t keep you,” says she; “it will hardly keep you in victuals.”
“Then I will have no victuals,” says I, again very innocently; “let me but live with you.”
“Why, can you live without victuals?” says she.
“Yes,” again says I, very much like a child, you may be sure, and still I cried heartily.