"We have threepence a week," said Betty with justifiable pride. But a moment later she was sorry that she had appeared to boast of their superior good fortune.
"Threepence a week! Do you indeed? But I dare say you have everything you want directly you ask for it?" observed the boy very dolefully. "What should you say if you had been left an orphan at the mercy of a cruel guardian, who sent you first to a school where they starved you, then to a school where they beat you, and then here where they do both?"
"Do you mean that Mrs. Howard starves and beats you?" inquired Madge, horrified by these disclosures.
"Oh, rather! Dry bread for dinner, and if you won't eat it you are locked up in the cellar until you do. It's quite dark, and the black beetles crawl over you. Ugh! Have you ever had a black beetle walk across your face?"
"No!" exclaimed Madge; "I've never touched one. Cook says she sometimes sees them on the kitchen floor at night, but of course we are in bed then."
"Well, think of being shut up in a perfectly dark cellar—"
"Is it underground?" interrupted John.
"Jolly well underground I should say!" continued the boy. "Fifty steps down, and an iron door at the top and the bottom of the stairs, so that however much you shouted nobody could possibly hear you. And nothing but slimy black earth to lie upon."
"How do you know it's black if you are in the dark?" asked Betty, so deeply interested in this terrible tale that she wished to understand every detail.
"I tell you I know it is black!" said the boy sharply. "Black, and covered with pools of dirty water. And there are toads all about. If you don't believe me, though, I won't tell you any more about it."