Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 126: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Rep Thy, Om LADY BESS’S HISTORY 109 she was kinder far to her menials than to myself. Mrs. Lloyd, as I have already said, was constantly finding fault. li I corrected the children when they did wrong, or if I let them have their own way, I was equally hable to blame, and thus I found my situation rapidly becoming intolerable. The domestics, seeing how I was treated by their master and the two ladies, followed their example, so that I could scarcely get even the most necessary services performed, and had to a great extent to do menial things for myself. I wrote frequently to Frank, but I never in my letters mentioned to him how thoroughly unhappy I was. ‘Thus some months passed away, and at length, as my ideas began to grow enlarged and my experience of the world increased, I began to ask myself why I should put up with so much ill-treatment. I reasoned that if my qualifica- tions were such as to enable me to obtain my bread at all, they would avail for the purpose in some other family than Sir John Marston’s, and inspired by these reflections, I felt a certain independence of spirit growing up within me. When once this spirit had sprung into existence, or, rather, when the natural strength of my mind began thus to develop itself, I assumed a loftier bearing toward those around me. One day, when the children had been guilty of some exceed- ing act of rudeness, I chastised them with great severity. Their cries brought up their mother, Mrs. Lloyd, and she began abusing me with her usual violence. I desired her not to address me in such language, told her that she was no lady, but only fit for a fishwife, and gave her plainly and frankly to understand that so long as I had the charge of her daughters | was thenceforth determined to punish them whenever they deserved it. She hastened away to tell her uncle, Sir John Marston, who rushed up to the nursery furious with rage. When he began storming at me I told him he was a cowardly bully, and that he would not dare behave thus to one of his own sex. He blustered and fumed, endeavouring to break my spirit, and he even raised his hand to strike me, when I snatched up a footstool and hurled it at his head. It struck him a severe blow, but tranquillized him in a moment, and he quitted the nursery without another word. “Thus far I was victorious. But presently I had to en- - counter the seli-sufficient insolence of Lady Marston, for CONnNIELDOOKS (FO)