It was Florrie's afternoon out, and the child was wearing, for the first time, an old brown skirt that Hilda had abandoned to her.

But in this long skirt she was no more a child.

Although scarcely yet fifteen years old, she was a grown woman.

She had astoundingly developed during her service with Mrs.Lessways.She was scarcely less tall than Hilda, and she possessed a sturdy, rounded figure which put Hilda's to shame.

It was uncanny--the precocity of the children of the poor! It was disturbing! On a chair lay Florrie's new 'serviceable' cloak, and a cheap but sound bonnet: both articles the fruit of a special journey with her aunt to Baines's drapery shop at Bursley, where there was a small special sober department for servants who were wise enough not to yield to the temptation of 'finery.' Florrie, who at thirteen and a half had never been able to rattle one penny against another, had since then earned some two thousand five hundred pennies, and had clothed herself and put money aside and also poured a shower of silver upon her clamorous family.