"Why are you neglecting everything in this way? Come, answer me, Clara."
"Don't know; I'm upset, I s'pose."
"Well, what has upset you?"
"Master's accident, of course. I wouldn't care a bit if it was some folks—serve them right! But master, who never speaks a cross word to anyone, and always asks after mother—that it should happen to him! It isn't fair! I don't see what is to prevent any of us getting our legs broken if he is to be smashed up in this way; and I'm that upset, I can't seem to settle to anything."
"But that is just what we've all got to learn to do—for father's sake. And, Clara, I think God has sent us this trouble because we have all been so careless and thankless in the past. You've never really cared to do your work properly, I'm afraid; you've never felt any real responsibility about it——"
"Oh, how can you say that? I'm always at work, and never, never done!"
"That's just because you never think about your work; you don't ever take the trouble to arrange it; and you don't care a bit about neatness or cleanliness."
Clara raises the corner of the dirty apron from her mouth to her eyes.
"What's the good?" she whimpers. "I should get in a muddle again directly; my work isn't anything but muddle!"
"But that's what it shouldn't be. You do your work as though you thought it wasn't worth doing at all."