"And I mean to be a mother to that gal," said Mrs. Stanley, still shaking the strap at her threateningly.
"You put that strap down and come away. If you lay her up, as you will do if you once begin, you'll be sorry for it yerself to-morrow. If you hadn't had a drop too much out of that bottle, you wouldn't begin a row just as we've come to a fresh place. Do you want us to get kicked off the ground before the fair begins?" demanded Stanley.
He was beginning to lose his temper now. He did not often venture to interfere with anything his wife thought fit to do; but he knew well enough that she would never have taken this course if she had not drunk pretty freely, and the idea that money might be lost, all through this fit of temper, provoked him.
"I'll give it to her," said Mrs. Stanley still threateningly, but in wavering tones now.
"All right! Give it to her as much as you like when the fair is over, and it won't interfere with business," said the man.
"Ah! And I will," said Mrs. Stanley, dropping the strap and looking vengefully at Lizzie. "I'll let her know whether she's to defy me as she did her other mother. I'll teach her a different lesson, I'll warrant," and she slowly turned and went down the steps after her husband.
Lizzie crept back to her hard dirty bed trembling in every limb, but firm in her resolve neither to drink gin nor call this woman "mother." She might beat her, but she would never yield. And that night Lizzie kneeled down at the side of her sack, and prayed to God to help her, and to comfort and help the dear mother she had forsaken.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
CONCLUSION.
IN spite of the dreadful threats held before her by Mrs. Stanley, Lizzie went to sleep almost as soon as she lay down again on her unsavoury bed, and slept until the noise of the dogs and first shrieks of the steam whistle roused her. She jumped up then and threw open the door of the van, and began shaking the dresses of the ghastly wax figures, and whisking off the dust with a feather brush. Then she washed herself at a pail of water where the other girls had already gathered, and put on the pink tarlatan dress ready to begin her dreary work of the day.