"Of course you haven't! Neither have I! And I didn't go to ask Mrs. Brown to help us; but not even Mrs. Satchell, who has always pretended to be such a friend to mother, would lend us a clean sheet, and if it hadn't been for Mrs. Brown, I believe mother would have died. As to being better than us; why, of course it was true. Their house is clean; but ours is always dirty. They could lend me clean sheets; but we hadn't enough for ourselves."
"I tell you I earn more wages than Brown, let 'em say what they like," vociferated Collins.
"Wages ain't everything," said Jessie. "I tell you the little Browns always looked nicer than we did, though their frocks didn't cost half so much, mother said; but then, they always had tidy boots to wear. And sometimes when I had a new frock, I couldn't have boots, and my toes were all out, or else there were big holes in my stockings; but Mrs. Brown showed Fanny how to mend hers, and I don't believe mother knows how to mend stockings now," said Jessie.
"Don't you say a word agin your mother!" interrupted Collins, sharply. "She was the handsomest woman in this town when I married her."
"I ain't saying a word against her!" retorted Jessie, "and Mrs. Brown ain't either. 'Take good care of your mother, Jessie. Look after your mother, Jessie,' has been her word to me every day, while all the time she's just been trying to make me do the things she taught Fanny long ago. Perhaps mother couldn't help the place getting dirty; perhaps her mother didn't show her how to do it, but it don't make any difference; we are dirty, and the Browns are clean, and Mrs. Brown has been trying to teach me like she did her own Fanny, and—"
"Ah, that was the girl who told Polly she was better than you," interrupted Collins, in whose mind the words seem to rankle still.
"Yes, Fanny said it, I dare say, but I know Mrs. Brown didn't; she wouldn't, though I don't suppose she liked her girls to go with us, because we were dirty and untidy, and played about in the streets at night as long as we liked. She didn't want Fanny to do that, and so I dare say she said, 'Now, you keep away from that Jessie Collins, or she'll want you to run the street with her.'"
"You seem to know all about it," said her father, who could not help smiling as she mimicked the tone and manner of Mrs. Brown.
This was just what Jessie wanted, to win her father back to a better humour; for what should she do if he said Mrs. Brown was not to come again. In the midst of all the bustle and hard work of this last week, she had thought again and again of the talk she had had with her governess, and how Miss Martin said she hoped she would grow up a useful woman, who she would be proud to say had been to her school.
To have Miss Martin proud of her would be something worth working for, and if anybody could show her how to become a useful woman, it would be Mrs. Brown, and so her father must be persuaded to ask Mrs. Brown to come in and out still, though they must have one of her mother's old friends, she feared, to do the washing now.