Her hands and arms were red and chapped, but her face had bloomed perfect in the kitchen like a flower in a marl-pit.

It was a face that an ambitious girl could rely on.

Its charm and the fluid charm of her movements atoned a thousand times for all her barbaric ignorance and crudity; the grime on her neck was naught.
Hilda watched, intensely ashamed of this spying, but she could not bring herself to withdraw.

She was angry with Florrie; she was outraged.

Then she thought: "Why should I be angry?
The fact is I'm being mother all over again.