I've got the key.

_I may not be back till the last train_." "Yes, miss!" And what with Hilda's solemnity and Florrie's impressed eyes, the ten-forty-five was transformed into a train that circulated in the dark and mysterious hour just before cockcrow.

Hilda, alone, was always appealing to Florrie's loyalty.
Sometimes when discreetly abolishing some old-fashioned, work-increasing method of her mother's, she would speak to Florrie in a tone of sudden, transient intimacy, raising her for a moment to the rank of an intellectual equal as her voice hinted that her mother after all belonged to the effete generation.
Awkwardly, with her gloved hands, turning over the pages of a book in which the slip-proof had been carelessly left hidden, Hilda, from her bedroom, heard Florrie come whistling down the attic stairs.

Florrie had certainly heard nothing of her young mistress since the door-bang which had signalled her departure for the office.

In the delusion that she was utterly solitary in the house, Florrie was whistling, not at all like a modest young woman, but like a carter.