All that passed through her mind as she made the promise, but the curate's wife could not tell that. She only thought that this little girl seemed very straightforward.
"So you would be able to come before breakfast, and light the kitchen fire?" she asked.
"But does not your mother want you, as you have such a large family at home?"
"No, ma'am, 'cause mother's obliged to stay at home with the little 'uns, and she says as we didn't ought both of us to be at home."
"But I am afraid I shall not be able to pay you as much as I should like, Kittie; I have very little to spend; and yet--" She sighed. "I _am_ so tired, and it would be such a comfort to have you if you were a good girl."
"I'd try to be, ma'am," answered Kittie; "but--mother says I'm very tiresome sometimes."
"We all are," she said gently; "but if we know it, and try to be better, so as to please our Lord and Master, we are sure to improve."
Kittie's eyes gave a flash; nobody talked to her quite like that. She should like to serve this pretty lady very much.
"Then you will come in the evenings too, and wash up our dishes for us, and help me put the children to bed, or anything I may want?"
Kitty promised, and went home, about the happiest little girl in London. Of course her difficulties were yet to come.
Two whole shillings a week! It seemed a fortune to her.
Cherry and Miss Hobson were as pleased as she could wish, and then she ran down and burst in with her news to her mother.
"Oh, Kittie!" exclaimed Mrs. Blunt, "won't you just have to be good to them dear little children! and to the lady too. I never did see such a wonderful thing, never. But it's like my Lord, that it is!"
When, after a fortnight's work at the Hall, Jem went back to London, he left Meg and Dickie to get two more weeks of fresh air and country milk.
Perhaps to Dickie that month in the country seemed to him afterwards as but one brief day filled with the birds' song.
All day long the two sat out under the apple-trees basking in the sunshine, and listening to the melodious sounds from the Hall farm.
Dickie, in Meg's old little wooden chair, was learning to catch the song of the different birds, and would listen intently and patiently while Meg tried to teach him how to distinguish them.