If you do not need to modify the substring, then you can use QStringRef. The QStringRef class is a read only wrapper around an existing QString that references a substring within the existing string. This gives much better performance than creating a new QString object to contain the sub-string. E.g.
QString myString("This is a string");
QStringRef subString(&myString, 5, 2); // subString contains "is"
If you do need to modify the substring, then left(), mid() and right() will do what you need...
QString myString("This is a string");
QString subString = myString.mid(5,2); // subString contains "is"
subString.append("n't"); // subString contains "isn't"