A gypsy against her will

by Emma Leslie

But a sharp cut with the cane that Mrs. Stanley still carried, soon reduced her historical knowledge to a quiet acquiescence in the dictum of its latest exponent, and the next being murderers again, Lizzie got on better.

One more round, and then Mrs. Stanley, with a critical eye to Lady Jane Grey and Bloody Mary, pronounced her deliverance "pretty well."

These two, however, had to be repeated, and then Lizzie was left to make a further acquaintance with the hideous waxen effigies, while Mrs. Stanley went off to superintend the preparations for dinner.

Lizzie had had nothing but a few slices of bread and dripping by way of food since the previous Saturday, but to-day she had a good dinner of beef-steak and new bread, and felt better prepared for the opening of the show after she had eaten it.

This corner of the race-course, where they had taken up their quarters, was just like the fair-ground she had visited the previous week. She recalled the disgust she had felt when standing outside the faded red curtain across the doorway, and first smelt the sawdust and paraffin fumes with which the atmosphere was charged. Now that the lamps were all alight, and the back door closed, and the show ready for business to commence, the recollections of that scene was brought forcibly back to her recollection by the smell that almost immediately pervaded the place.

What a fool she had been! She did not need anyone else to tell her, that in trying to escape from the duties of her own station in life, she had thrown herself into a slavery that was ten times worse than anything she could have imagined possible when she was in a comfortable place of domestic service.

She might have relapsed into tears of self-pity over the plight she had brought herself into, but there was Stanley at the door, and if he took a less active part in the management of affairs than his wife, he would not fail to tell her of anything Lizzie might do that was not calculated to promote the "business."

Now, tears in the attendant at a wax-work show, whose lot in life is supposed to be as rosy as her gaudy dress, would never do; and when the man, thrusting his head behind the curtain, saw Lizzie sitting down in one corner looking very woe-begone and tired, he roared out:

"Come now, that won't do! Just jump up and be brisk, and look lively, not like a monkey going to be hung!"

Then the curtain dropped, and above the loud bawling of, "Walk up, walk up, ladies and gentlemen, and see the best sight at the races," she could hear the clatter of feet outside, and the rattle of halfpence, and the next minute a little knot of rough boys, laughing and chaffing each other, pushed their way into the show, and Lizzie's work began. But her voice trembled now that she was in the actual presence of her first audience, and she faltered so much that one of them called out: