“Will you find the rent for another?” coolly asked Mrs Lewis. “What can that girl be at with the coffee?”
It came in at last; and Anne was abused for her laziness. When she could get a word in, she explained that Sally had had an accident with the tea-kettle, and fresh water had to be boiled.
More indignation: Julia’s egg turned out to be bad. What business had Anne to boil bad eggs? Anne, saying nothing, took it away, boiled another and brought it in. Then Mrs. Lewis fancied she could eat a thin bit of toasted bacon; and Anne must go and do it at the end of a fork. Altogether the breakfast was nearly at an end before she could sit down and eat her own bread-and-butter.
“I have been thinking,” she began, in a hesitating tone, to Mrs. Lewis, “that I should like to go out. If you have no objection.”
“Go out where?”
“Into some situation.”
Mrs. Lewis, in the act of conveying a piece of bacon to her mouth, held it suspended in mid-air, and stared at Anne in amazement.
“Into what?”
“A situation in some gentleman’s family. I have no prospect before me; no home; I must earn my own living.”
“The girl’s daft!” cried Mrs. Lewis, resuming her breakfast. “No home! Why, you have a home here; your proper home. Was it not your father’s?”