Esther Waters • Paragraph 1534
Stage 1 of 6

Read it through once

"Yes, miss, I do, and what makes it so 'ard to bear is that for the last two months or more I've been keeping company with Fred Parsons--that's the stationer's assistant; you've seen him in the shop, miss--and he and me is engaged to be married. He's earning good money, thirty shillings a week; he's as good a young man as ever stepped--religious, kind-hearted, everything as would make a woman 'appy in 'er 'ome. It is 'ard for a girl to keep up with 'er religion in some of the situations we have to put up with, and I'd mostly got out of the habit of chapel-going till I met him; it was 'e who led me back again to Christ. But for all that, understanding very well, not to say indulgent for the failings of others, like yourself, miss. He knew all about Jackie from the first, and never said nothing about it, but that I must have suffered cruel, which I have. He's been with me to see Jackie, and they both took to each other wonderful like; it couldn't 'ave been more so if 'e'd been 'is own father. But now all that's broke up, for when Fred meets William it is as likely as not as he'll think quite different."