astened up close by, and off she would go, racing as hard
as she could go all along the very edge of the cliff, and away to the
Downs, the miller's boy racing and yelling after her, but he might as well
have tried to catch a will-o'-the-wisp.

So Cherry went on very happily, working very hard and playing too, until
she reached the age of sixteen or so, when she began to feel a wish to see
more life than that lonely moor provided, and have a change from the tiny
hut which could not hold a half of them comfortably. She wanted a new
gown too, her mother had promised it to her ever since she was thirteen,
and she had looked forward to it even more than she did to Feasten-Sunday,
for she had never had a new frock in her life. She could not enjoy
Feasten-Sunday either, unless she was dressed as nicely as other girls.

Year after year, though, she was disappointed, there was no money and no
new dress, and poor Cherry had to content herself with a clean apron over
her shabby old frock, which had been patched and mended until there was
only one piece of the original left, and no one but Cherry herself could
have told which that was.

She was not fit to go to church or to fair, and she felt it very hard that
she could never enjoy herself. And then, to make matters worse, her great
friend Tamsin Bray, who was a year younger than Cherry, had a beautiful
frock all trimmed with ribbons, and she wore it to Nancledry to the
preaching there, and had a fine time there, full of adventures and new
experiences, as she took care to tell poor Cherry when she came back,
making Cherry feel more dissatisfied than ever. She knew she was a
prettier girl than Tamsin, and would get more admiration if she only had
the chance.

After that Cherry could no longer go on bearing things as they were.
If her mother couldn't buy her a new frock, she would go to work, and earn
one for herself, she determined. So she told her parents she was going to
look for a situation, and nothing they could say could make her change her
mind, so they gave up trying to.

"Why don't 'ee try and get a place down to Towednack?" asked her mother,
who wanted her not to go far from home.

"Iss, fay, mother," answered Cherry sharply, "a likely tale I'm going to
live in a place where the cow ate the bell-rope, and where they've nothing
but fish and taties all the year round, except Sundays, when they have
conger-pie! Dear no, I'm going where I can get butcher's meat some