"A duster! Don't bother me about such things. We haven't got any."
Jessie looked nonplussed. "May I have this?" she asked at last, picking up a bit of rag from a pile of things untidily heaped on a chair. Mrs. Lang, though, was gone, and did not hear her. Jessie looked at the rag, and pondered. At last, however, the temptation to wipe off some of the dust became too much for her, and she used it. "I can wash out the rag again," she comforted herself by thinking. "I wonder what I had better do next," for Mrs. Lang had not returned. "I s'pose I'd better sweep out the passage and brush down the steps. Oh, I do want some breakfast!" she added, with a sigh.
While she was sweeping down the steps before the front door, her stepmother came into the kitchen again. The semblance of a smile crossed her face as she looked at the neatly-arranged chairs, and heard the broom going in the distance.
"We're to be kept tidy, now, I s'pose," she muttered, with a laugh. "I wonder how long it'll last. She won't get much encouragement here."
Jessie came into the kitchen with her broom, and found her stepmother frying bacon. It smelt very good, and Jessie was ravenously hungry.
"Does father have to go to work every day as early as this?" she asked.
"Work!" cried Mrs. Lang, with a scornful laugh. "Work! I've never known your father work since he crossed my path! It's the races he's off to; you wouldn't find him get up at this hour for anything else."
Jessie stared wide-eyed. "Doesn't he ever work?" she gasped.
"How does he live, then?"
"Well you may ask!" snapped Mrs. Lang bitterly. "He's kept. I do the work, and he finds that more to his taste. I've got the house full of lodgers, and I can tell you it takes me all my time, and more, to look after them. I never get any pleasure, and your father never gets any work, and he thinks that is just as it should be."
Jessie stood for a moment looking very thoughtful. Everything in this house seemed to her wrong. Just as it all used to be in her old home before she went to her grandfather's; but she knew nothing better then, she was too young. Now she was older and better able to understand, for she had had a long and happy experience of what a home could and should be, where each did a share, and thought always of others first. She felt suddenly a great pity for her stepmother, and a liking such as she had not thought possible an hour or so ago. Perhaps she could do something, she thought, to make her less unhappy; at any rate she could help her.