"Martha help me. Lauk, Miss Dorothy, she be no help to a body, she make all the dirt and muddle she can. She do take my nice white dish keeler to wash her missus' dirty dawg. I can't prevent her. I says to her only yesterday, if a' do that agen, I'll tell Miss Dorothy. 'Go to the devil,' says she, 'with yer. Miss Dorothy she be no missus o' mine. Mrs. Gilbert's missus here now. I'd like to hear Doll Chance dare to set me to work.' My heart's a breakin' wi' her dirty ways and her saucy impertinence. I'm right glad I'm going to-morrow; the old house a'nt like it wor."
"But this don't excuse you, Polly, for letting the fire out."
"Mrs. Gilbert told me hersel to let the fire go down directly the breakfus wor over. 'Miss Dorothy wull want it,' says I, 'to make the old missus her broth.' 'Let her want,' says she, 'or make it hersel. I don't mean to attend to her wants, I can tell you.'"
"Alas, alas!" sighed Dorothy, "what a house of misrule. Poor old father, how will it be with him by and bye, when they begin to abuse their power so early?"
Like the sailors, she saw breakers ahead, but had no power to steer the vessel off the rocks.
"Missus Gilbert," continued Polly, glad of getting some one to whom she could tell her griefs, "is allers jawing me, for not doing the work. But while her fat lazy girl sits doing naught, but towzleing the dawg, I'm not a' goin to kill mysel wi' work."
"Bear it patiently for a few hours, Polly. You will soon be free now. Run, there's a good girl to the woodstack, and bring some sticks to rekindle the fire."
In a few minutes, Polly rushed back to the kitchen, and flung an arm full of sticks down with a bang upon the hearth that could be heard all over the house, and holding up her hands cried out at the top of her voice. "A's been an' gone an' done it. I knew a' wud, directly a' got a chance."
"Done what?" demanded Dorothy, her cheeks blanching with terror.
"Ow'r Pincher ha' chawed up yon lump o' white wool."