The sights and sounds of the district she has to collect for trouble Betty dreadfully. Some of the women look utterly weary and down-trodden; others again are always scolding and quarrelling. Then the poor, sickly children—and occasional glimpses of rough, drink-sodden men—haunt her mind. She has over a hundred houses to collect for, and it takes her the whole of the three mornings to get through them all.
How many stories of want and misery she has listened to before the week's work is over!
"My husband has taken to the drink again." "My father was knocked down by a van and carried to the hospital." "The children have all got the measles." "Mother's taken bad with bronchitis." "My husband hasn't done a stroke of work for three weeks." Are all the stories true? Betty has no means of knowing.
Sick at heart, she returns home and throws herself into a chair after each morning's work. A shabby, untidy room? Well, perhaps it is; but, Oh! how different from the homes she has just visited! How wrong she has been to grumble so in the past—how wicked to be discontented!
One day she returns in a specially humble frame of mind.
"My home could be made a really beautiful one if I only knew how to manage. But I don't. I'm very stupid, somehow. I try and try, but never seem to know what to do for the best.
"Have I made any difference at all, since I came home from Grannie's?
"Clara is a little better, perhaps—at least, her face is a shade cleaner; and I didn't notice more than two saucepans standing about, and—Oh! yes, the kettle was boiling this morning—I mustn't forget all that; but how rough the children are! How unreasonable Bob is at times! Two or three evenings he has stayed out quite late. Father wouldn't like that—I wonder where he goes? Then, there's Lucy; nothing in the home seems to interest her. I do think it very selfish of her to spend so much time in reading, especially just now.
"When I first returned home, I thought everything was wrong; now I can see it isn't the home so much, it's the people in it. We're all spoiling it—and I'm helping to spoil it as well.
"What grand thoughts I had about making everything right all at once, and what a little I seem likely to do!"