In spite of her spreading figure and greying hair, there was something childlike about Bertha. She was excessively submissive before her employers, but, alone with the children, with whom she apparently felt on a level footing, she was boisterous and slangy. Then she was so pleased with little things and so easily persuaded, that she actually seemed unable to make up her mind on any subject until given a lead. She had an impulsive way, too, of telling something, then begging that it might never be repeated. “I’ve been and gone and let that blasted old cat out of the bag again,” she would say, “but I know I can trust you. You won’t tell nobody.”

She let a very big cat out of the bag to Laura a year or two later. Laura had gone to the house alone, found her Aunt Edith out, and was sipping the usual cup of milk in the kitchen and paying for it with small talk, when a very pretty young girl came to the back door with a parcel from Aunt Edith’s dressmaker and was introduced to her as “our young Elsie.” Elsie could not stay to sit down, but she kissed Bertha affectionately and Bertha waved to her from the doorway as she crossed the yard.

“What a pretty girl!” exclaimed Laura. “She looks like a robin with those rosy cheeks and all that soft brown hair.”

Bertha looked pleased. “Do you see any likeness?” she asked, drawing up her figure and brushing her hair from her forehead.

Laura could not; but, as it seemed to be expected, she ventured: “Well, perhaps the colour of her cheeks…”

“What relation would you take her for?”

“Niece?” suggested Laura.

“Nearer than that. You’ll never guess. But I’ll tell you if you’ll swear finger’s wet, finger dry, never to tell a soul.”

Not particularly interested as yet, but to please her, Laura wetted her finger, dried it on her handkerchief, drew her hand across her throat and swore the required oath; but Bertha, her cheeks redder than ever, only sighed and looked foolish. “I’m making a fool of myself again, I know,” she said at last, “but I said I’d tell you, and, now you have sworn, I must. Our young Elsie’s my own child. I gave birth to her myself. I’m her mother, only she never calls me that. She calls our Mum at home Mother and me Bertha, as if I was her sister. Nobody here knows, only the Mis’is, and I expect the Master and your Aunt Ann, though they’ve never either of them mentioned it, even with their eyes, and I know I oughtn’t to be telling you at your age, but you are such a quiet little thing, and you saying she was pretty and all, I felt I must claim her.”