Ten o'clock had been the hour for going to bed at Mrs. Lloyd's; but apparently there was no such rule here, for after the clock had struck eleven, her new mistress told her to clear up all the rest of the dirty things, and put them away, before she went to bed; and that she must get up at six the next morning to get all the boots and shoes cleaned before breakfast, and the dining-room swept and dusted.
Fanny answered, "Yes, ma'am;" but it was easy to see that she already began to think she might have to pay too dearly for her increased wages, and by the time she got to bed, she was so tired that she cried herself to sleep.
By the end of the next day she had made up her mind that she would not stay more than a month, for Mrs. Lewis did not seem to understand how to manage either household or children; and now that one of them was ill, Fanny was kept running up and down stairs to the neglect of her other work, and was then scolded because it was not done.
Coming from a well-ordered household like Mrs. Lloyd's, it seemed to Fanny that everything went haphazard here, and mistress and maid alike seemed to be always struggling to overtake the work that needed doing, and yet never succeeded.
Mrs. Lewis was never a good manager, but now that she had her little daughter to nurse, matters were a good deal worse, and poor Fanny was so tired before bedtime came that she hardly knew how to drag one foot before the other.
It came to be a regular thing that she should cry herself to sleep every night, and oversleep herself in the morning.
Then, when the child got worse, and Fanny heard some one say it was scarlet fever, she could scarcely snatch time to have a meal in peace, for there was no time to sit down. When a meal was given to her, she took it to the kitchen and had a mouthful as she could snatch it, while washing up or getting something ready to take upstairs.
One day when she took up something to the sick-room, Mrs. Lewis gave her an apron full of odds and ends, and told her to put them on the kitchen fire; but the sight of a pink silk scarf, scarcely soiled, made Fanny decide to look then; over before she burned them, and when she did so, the pretty scarf and one or two pieces of ribbon were selected as being too good to throw away, and Fanny put them into her pocket.
At the end of a fortnight Fanny told her mistress that she would like to leave at the end of the month, as the work was too much for her.
Mrs. Lewis looked at her for a moment in silence, and then actually burst into tears.