Are you willing to do that ?" "Oh yes, ma'am.

I will do it," said Mrs.Lee, while her heart sank within her at the idea of performing tasks for which her feeble health and strength seemed altogether insufficient.

But she felt that she must put her hands to the work, if she died in the effort to perform it.
Three days afterwards, she entered, as was agreed upon, at half a dollar a day, the kitchen of Mrs.Walker, who had but a few years before been one of her friends and companions.
It is remarkable, how persons of the most delicate constitutions will sometimes bear up under the severest toil, and encounter the most trying privations, and yet not fail, but really appear to gain some degree of strength under the ordeal that it seemed, to all human calculation, must destroy them.
So it was with Mrs.Lee.Although she suffered much from debility and weariness, occasioned by excessive toil for one all unaccustomed to hard labour, yet she did not, as she feared, sink rapidly under it.

By taking in as much washing and ironing as she could do, and going out two days in the week regularly, she managed to procure for herself and child the bare necessaries of life.

This she had continued for about two years at the time when first introduced to the reader's attention, as returning with her child to her comfortless home.
The slight movement near her door, which Mrs.Lee had thought to be only an imaginary sound, was a reality.