Her great solicitude was for her poor mother, who had lost her health, whose blood was impoverished by constant child-bearing. Mother and daughter were seen in the evenings, one with a baby at her breast, the other with an eighteen months old child in her arms. Esther did not dare leave her mother, and to protect her she gave up school, and this was why she had never learnt how to read.
One of the many causes of quarrel between Mrs. Saunders and her husband was her attendance at prayer-meetings when he said she should be at home minding her children. He used to accuse her of carrying on with the Scripture-readers, and to punish her he would say, "This week I'll spend five bob more in the public—that'll teach you, if beating won't, that I don't want none of your hypocritical folk hanging round my place." So it befell the Saunders family to have little to eat; and Esther often wondered how she should get a bit of dinner for her sick mother and her hungry little brothers and sisters. Once they passed nearly thirty hours without food. She called them round her, and knelt down amid them: they prayed that God might help them; and their prayers were answered, for at half-past twelve a Scripture lady came in with flowers in her hands. She asked Mrs. Saunders how her appetite was. Mrs. Saunders answered that it was more than she could afford, for there was nothing to eat in the house. Then the Scripture lady gave them eighteen pence, and they all knelt down and thanked God together.
But although Saunders spent a great deal of his money in the public-house, he rarely got drunk and always kept his employment. He was a painter of engines, a first-rate hand, earning good money, from twenty-five to thirty shillings a week. He was a proud man, but so avaricious that he stopped at nothing to get money. He was an ardent politician, yet he would sell his vote to the highest bidder, and when Esther was seventeen he compelled her to take service regardless of the character of the people or of what the place was like. They had left Barnstaple many months, and were now living in a little street off the Vauxhall Bridge Road, near the factory where Saunders worked; and since they had been in London Esther had been constantly in service. Why should he keep her? She wasn't one of his children, he had quite enough of his own. Sometimes of an evening, when Esther could escape from her drudgery for a few minutes, her mother would step round, and mother and daughter, wrapped in the same shawl, would walk to and fro telling each other their troubles, just as in old times. But these moments were few. In grimy lodging-houses she worked from early morning till late at night, scrubbing grates, preparing bacon and eggs, cooking chops, and making beds. She had become one of those London girls to whom rest, not to say pleasure, is unknown, who if they should sit down for a few moments hear the mistress's voice, "Now, Eliza, have you nothing to do, that you are sitting there idle?" Two of her mistresses, one after the other, had been sold up, and now all the rooms in the neighbourhood were unlet, no one wanted a "slavey," and Esther was obliged to return home. It was on the last of these occasions that her father had taken her by the shoulders, saying——
"No lodging-houses that want a slavey? I'll see about that. Tell me, first, have you been to 78?"
"Yes, but another girl was before me, and the place was taken when I arrived."
"I wonder what you were doing that you didn't get there sooner; dangling about after your mother, I suppose! Well, what about 27 in the Crescent?"
"I couldn't go there—that Mrs. Dunbar is a bad woman."
"Bad woman! Who are you, I should like to know, that you can take a lady's character away? Who told you she was a bad woman? One of the Scripture-readers, I suppose! I knew it was. Well, then, just get out of my house."
"Where shall I go?"
"Go to hell for all I care. Do you hear me? Get out!"