What did you give her?
I heard you in the pantry.' 'Four shillings was what I got that chair for,' replies my mother firmly.
If I don't interfere there will be a coldness between them for at least a minute.

'There is blood on your finger,' I say to my mother.
'So there is,' she says, concealing her hand.
'Blood!' exclaims my sister anxiously, and then with a cry of triumph, 'I warrant it's jelly.

You gave that lassie one of the jelly cans!' The Glasgow waiter brings up tea, and presently my sister is able to rise, and after a sharp fight I am expelled from the kitchen.

The last thing I do as maid of all work is to lug upstairs the clothes-basket which has just arrived with the mangling.

Now there is delicious linen for my mother to finger; there was always rapture on her face when the clothes-basket came in; it never failed to make her once more the active genius of the house.