Lizzie Betts is a restless servant girl who chafes against discipline, envies finer clothes, and blames bad luck for the consequences of her own choices. While more dutiful girls like Emma Russell accept hard work with patience and self-sacrifice, Lizzie grumbles, shirks responsibility, and dreams of an easier life outside service. When her wish to return home is refused, she grows bitter and deliberately troublesome, only to learn that her family cannot afford to keep her and that steadiness, not self-pity, is what will secure a future. In her resentment, Lizzie is drawn by flattery and curiosity toward the fairground world of Mrs. Stanley, where a promise of excitement and importance lures her into danger. What seems at first like comfort and freedom quickly becomes confinement, hunger, humiliation, and deceit as she is taken in, stripped of her familiar clothes, and treated as a pawn. This sharp, unsettling chapter contrasts duty with vanity and exposes how easily pride can lead the unwary into exploitation. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.

À propos de l'auteur

Leslie, Emma

Emma Leslie was a prolific English novelist and children’s writer of the Victorian era, remembered for her lively storytelling, moral seriousness, and deep sympathy for young readers. Writing in a period when books for children were often expected to instruct as well as entertain, she built a substantial career producing novels, stories, and religiously informed fiction that reflected the values and anxieties of her time. Her work often centers on perseverance, faith, family duty, and the struggle to do what is right in difficult circumstances, while also showing a keen interest in social class, hardship, and the emotional lives of girls and young women. What makes Leslie still relevant today is the clarity with which she treats questions of conscience, identity, and resilience; beneath the Victorian setting, her stories speak to readers who are navigating pressure, exclusion, or the desire to define themselves honestly. Her legacy lies in her ability to combine accessible storytelling with moral and emotional depth, making her an important figure in the history of popular children’s literature. Readers who enjoy classic fiction with strong values, earnest character development, and a distinctly Victorian atmosphere are likely to find her work especially rewarding.