"So unnecessary, all this fuss and muddle; what possible good can 'Love' do to all this sort of thing?"
Yet Love has already won one small victory for her. Bob would not have hung up his cap had she scolded for an hour. But she had answered his last unkind remark gently, and when she returns to the sitting-room the cap is gone.
Nevertheless, as the day wears on, Betty feels more and more despondent.
"I don't see how things could be worse," she thinks, "and I can't see how I can ever make them any better."
The younger children are in bed now, and mother is trying to wash the soot from her hands and face in her own room.
"Father will be late to-night; he will want his supper directly he comes home. Of course, it will be left to me to get it. I wonder what Lucy finds to do so perpetually in her own room? I've a good mind to tell her pretty plainly what I think of her selfish, unsociable ways, always going away by herself, and leaving me to attend to everything," and Betty sighs wearily, and, seating herself on the little sofa, begins to sort over the heap of unmended stockings.
The next moment she is startled by a loud double knock at the street door. She jumps to her feet and stands listening. What can it be?
Ah, now Clara is coming upstairs. She is always so slow.
What is that? Clara screaming? Betty flies down the passage.
"Oh, Oh, Oh!" shrieks Clara. "The master's killed, and they've brought him home in a cab!"