246 The Real Charlotte, 



*' Psha ! Louisa's a fool ! How does she know Miss 

 Francie was crying ? I'll bet a shilling 'twas only blowing 

 her nose she was." 



Norry had by this time spread a ragged blanket on the 

 table, and, snatching up the tongs, she picked out of the 

 heart of the fire a red-hot heater and thrust it into a box- 

 iron with unnecessary violence. 



" An' why wouldn't she cry ? Wasn't I listenin' to her 

 cry in' in her room lasht night an' I goin' up to bed ? " 

 She banged the iron down on the table and began to rub it 

 to and fro on the blanket. " But what use is it to cry, even 

 if ye dhragged the hair out of yer head ? Ye might as well 

 be singin' and dancin'." 



She flung up her head, and stared across the kitchen 

 under the wisps of hair that hung over her unseeing eyes 

 with such an expression as Deborah the Prophetess might 

 have worn. Charlotte gave a grunt of contempt, and pick- 

 ing Susan up from the bar of the table, she put him on her 

 shoulder and walked out of the kitchen. 



Francie had been since breakfast sitting by the window 

 of the dining-room, engaged in the cheerless task of darning 

 a stocking on a soda-water bottle. Mending stockings was 

 not an art that she excelled in ; she could trim a hat or cut 

 out a dress, but the dark, unremunerative toil of mending 

 stockings was as distasteful to her as stone-breaking to a 

 tramp, and the simile might easily be carried out by com- 

 paring the results of the process to macadamising. It was 

 a still, foggy morning ; the boughs of the scarlet-blossomed 

 fuchsia were greyed with moisture, and shining drops 

 studded the sash of the open window like sea-anemones. 

 It was a day that was both close and chilly, and intolerable 

 as the atmosphere of the Tally Ho dining-room would have 

 been with the window shut, the breakfast things still on the 

 table, and the all-pervading aroma of cats, the damp, lifeless 

 air seemed only a shade better to Francie as she raised her 

 tired eyes from time to time and looked out upon the dis- 

 couraging prospect. Everything stood in the same trance 

 of stillness in which it had been when she had got up at 

 five o'clock and looked out at the sluggish dawn broadening 

 in blank silence upon the fields. She had leaned out of 

 her window till she had become cold through and through, 



