we had some iced
with sherry, and lay on the bed drinking it as she told me her story
bit by bit. This is an account of my doings, and not of tales told me by
others, but I must tell _her_ tale, for I believed every bit of it, and
it is almost part of my own, and this is how it came out.

"If you never spent with a man till you did with me, you had frigged
yourself." "I never did till the gal at the fishmonger's did it to
me,--we slept together." "Then you had been in service?" "Only two
months, I went to mind a little child."

The fishmonger was a little struggling tradesman, in a house with a
shop on the ground-floor, and a little back-parlour, and kitchens, and a
cellar below where they kept fish-baskets.

Over the shop were two rooms, one was the fishmonger's bed-room, and two
bed-rooms above. The wife was confined to her bed, and her husband slept
alone in the back-room which was usually the female servant's; so the
servant was put into a bed on the top-floor. This maid cooked, cleaned,
did everything, and had an eye as well to the shop if her Mistress was
ill, and when Master and his man were out; but she could not mind the
child as well. The fishmonger asked the carpenter if he knew of a strong
steady lass, the carpenter named his own girl, and Kitty went for grub,
lodging, and one and six a week. She was to sleep with the maid on the
top-floor over the rooms where Master and Mistress slept. The servant's
name was Betty.

The fishmonger drank. A young man named Jim went with him to market, and
sometimes without him if he had been very drunk over night. Jim opened
the shop, harnessed the horse and cart, and every night when the Master
went to bed, Jim went to the underground kitchen, opened a cupboard,
pulled down something called a bed, and slept there.

Jim was up first, and to bed but last, could not go to bed till the
maid-of-all-work was out of the kitchen. Jim pissed in the sink, and
made his own bed every morning as soon as he got up, which was done
by turning it up somehow into the cupboard, and then he called up his
Master and the maid. The privy was in the yard.

Kitty took charge of the child, and the first night as she was going to
bed and took her things off Betty said, "Where is your night-gown?" "I
ain't got none," said Kitty, "I sleep in my shemmy." Betty tossed up
her head. Kitty cried. "Father's a poor man," said she, "but he's
respectable, and though I sleeps in my shemmy I am very clean,