Page:Live and Let Live.djvu/64

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LIVE AND LET LIVE.

her, and I came off to America to earn money to fetch them over. Here I thought it was but asking service, and getting it, and pay for it! The first lady I went to, she asked me, 'Did I understand the work in a gentleman's family?' and I said, 'Troth and I did not, but I was asy tached;' but she'd not take the trouble of taching a raw hand, and so to the next I just rubbed down the truth a bit, and said sure there was some things I did not quite understand; she asked me would I take lower wages till I learned; upon no account, I told her, for the learning was the sevarest of all; so she laughed and took me, and a happy time I should have had there, but the lady found fault with my dress not being smart like the others. And would I be after buying clothes, and my mother and Judy starving-like, and every month a year to me till they came. But I kept my rasons to myself, and got another place, where work was light, plenty of everything spent and wasted, and the lady riding all the day, and out all the evening; but in three months they failed, so that place was gone; but they paid me handsomely, good luck to them! Then I went to another great house, where I did my best, for my wages were high, and paid when I asked for them; but the lady was always finding fault with my 'Irish ways,' as she called them; and what ways would she have of me, I asked her, that was born and bred, and passed all my happy life in Ireland, save ten miserable months and six days in America, with ladies that could find fault with my Irish ways and never tached me better? so she called me 'partinent,' and I looked out for another place. This time my luck changed. It was to Mrs. Tilson's I went—the Almighty bless