f the moment devised this ingenious difficulty for
the child, who was sure to suffer in many ways from such a conflict of
authorities, Clem began to consider how she should spend her evening.
After all, Jane was too poor-spirited a victim to afford long
entertainment. Clem would have liked dealing with some one who showed
fight--some one with whom she could try savage issue in real
tooth-and-claw conflict. She had in mind a really exquisite piece of
cruelty, but it was a joy necessarily postponed to a late hour of the
night. In the meantime, it would perhaps be as well to take a stroll,
with a view of meeting a few friends as they came away from the
work-rooms. She was pondering the invention of some long and hard task
to be executed by Jane in her absence, when a knocking at the
house-door made itself heard. Clem at once went up to see who the
visitor was.

A woman in a long cloak and a showy bonnet stood on the step,
protecting herself with an umbrella from the bitter sleet which the
wind was now driving through the darkness. She said that she wished to
see Mrs. Hewett.

'Second-floor front,' replied Clem in the offhand, impertinent tone
wherewith she always signified to strangers her position in the house.

The visitor regarded her with a look of lofty contempt, and, having
deliberately closed her umbrella, advanced towards the stairs. Clem
drew into the back regions for a few moments, but as soon as she heard
the closing of a door in the upper part of the house, she too ascended,
going on tip-toe, with a noiselessness which indicated another side of
her character. Having reached the room which the visitor had entered,
she brought her ear close to the keyhole, and remained in that attitude
for a long time--nearly twenty minutes, in fact. Her sudden and swift
return to the foot of the stairs was followed by the descent of the
woman in the showy bonnet.

'Miss Peckover I' cried the latter when she had reached the foot of the
stairs.

'Well, what is it?' asked Clem, seeming to come up from the kitchen.

'Will you 'ave the goodness to go an' speak to Mrs. Hewett for a
hinstant?' said the woman, with much affectation of refined speech.

'All right! I will just now, if I've time.'

The visitor tossed her head and departed, whereupon Clem at once ran
upstairs. In five minutes she was back in the kitchen.

'See 'ere,' she addressed Jane. 'You know where Mr. Kirkwood works in
St. John's Square? You've been before n