“Getting what?”
“Narked—cross-like.”
“I see. So you didn’t care about that?”
“No. There is something in me here”—she laid her hand on her bosom—“that goes hot and hard when I’m not treated fair, and then I don’t care a brass farthing what ’appens.”
She was too excited as she thought of her old wrongs to correct the last dropped aitch, though she realized it and bit her lip.
“I been in service three years now, and I’ve been in four places. I’ve had enough.”
“And what now?”
“I shall stop ’ere as long as you do.”
Something in her tone, a greater huskiness, perhaps, surprised him, and he looked up at her and met her eyes full. He was confused and amazed and startled, and his heart grew big within him, but he could not turn away. In her expression there was a mingling of fierce strength, defiance, and that helplessness which had originally overcome him and led to his undoing. He was frightened, but deliciously, so that he liked it.
“I didn’t know,” she said, “that uncle drank. Father drank, too. There was a lot in our street that did. I’m not frightened of many things, but I am of that.”