But the woman put her hand upon it before she could do this. "Don't be in a hurry," she said with a grim smile; "we'll settle up first. Give me that twelve shillings your mistress gave you."
Lizzie put her hand into her pocket and took out her purse, not daring to disobey, for the woman's looks almost frightened her.
She turned the silver out into her hand and counted it. "There ain't twelve shillings here," she said throwing the purse on the table. "Come, hand out the other sixpence!"
"I haven't got it," said Lizzie, beginning to cry again.
"What have you done with it, then? Don't tell me no lies, or my Tom shall give you a taste of the horsewhip."
Faint from hunger, and broken-spirited already at her forlorn condition, Lizzie could only sob out her story of the broken tumbler. The woman pretended not to believe such a tale, and made it the excuse for insisting that Lizzie should strip herself that she might search her clothes. To protest was useless; the girl was soon made to do as she was told. And when her nice neat garments, that her mother had taken such pains to make for her, lay in a heap near the door, the woman suddenly opened it and kicked them out, then took a bundle from under her arm which Lizzie had not noticed before, and threw them at her feet.
"You can put them on when you're tired of being without," she said with a short laugh.
Lizzie kicked the clothes from her indignantly. She would not even unroll the bundle to see what it contained, but cowered down upon the couch, feeling herself insulted and outraged, and for the first time suspecting the good intentions of the woman in whose power she had placed herself. She would go away from them, if she was to be treated like this, she thought—she so soon to be a lady to have her clothes taken away from her. She forgot the food on the table in her anguish over this indignity, and sat huddled together crying for nearly an hour before she even looked at the garments that had been provided for her.
She was shivering with cold by that time, and looked eagerly round for the old woollen shawl she had worn in the morning. But it was nowhere to be seen now. Mrs. Stanley had taken that away with her. A little longer she sat crying and bemoaning her sad fate, then she stooped and unrolled the bundle of clothes.
The sight of the coarse, ragged, ill-washed garments brought on a fresh storm of sobs and tears, and Lizzie turned from them in disgust, sobbing out: