she has
never been in service before. Miss Pennie was very much interested in
her," added Miss Unity as an afterthought.

If Betty had a soft corner in her heart for anyone but her mistress it
was for Pennie. She did not at all approve of Miss Unity's taking up
with these new fancies, but to please Pennie she would put up with a
good deal. It was with something approaching a smile that she said:

"Oh, then, it's the little girl out of Anchor and Hope Alley, isn't it,
Miss? Her as Miss Pennie made the clothes for and used to call
Kettles?"

"Well," said Miss Unity reluctantly, "I am sorry to say she does live
there, but Mrs Margetts knows her mother well, and she's a very
deserving woman. We sha'n't call the girl Kettles--her name is Keturah.
You'll have to teach her, you know, Betty," she added apologetically.

As to that, Betty had no objection. She had a deal rather, she said,
have a girl who knew nothing and was willing to learn, than one who had
got into wrong ways and had to be got out of them. In short, she was
quite ready to look with favour on the idea, and to Miss Unity's great
surprise it was settled without further difficulty that Kettles was to
come on trial.

With her usual timidity, however, she now began to see the other side of
the question, and to be haunted by all sorts of misgivings. When she
woke in the middle of the night dreadful pictures presented themselves
of Kettles' father stealing upstairs with a poker in his hand in search
of the plate-basket. She could hear the dean saying when the theft was
discovered:

"Well, Miss Unity, what can you expect if you will have people in your
house out of Anchor and Hope Alley?"

It would no doubt be a dreadful risk, and before she went to sleep again
she had almost decided to give up the plan altogether. But morning
brought more courage, and when she found Betty ready to propose that the
girl should come that very day she could not draw back.

"I can soon run her up a cotton frock, and she can have one of my
aprons, and there's all her other clothes nice and ready," said Betty in
a business-like tone.

So Kettles came, newly clothed from top to toe and provided with plenty
of good advice by old Nurse. At first Miss Unity hardly knew she was in
the house, for Betty kept her strictly in the background, and hurried
her away into corners whenever her mistress appeared in the kitchen.
Judging, however, from the absence of complaint that thi