yes, perhaps. It's better to be healthy,
and enjoy life, than broken-spirited and hopeless. The strange thing is
that you were right--you fancied me just the kind of a girl I was: sad
and solitary, and shrinking from people--true enough. And I went to
chapel, and got comfort from it--as I hope to do again. Don't think
that I have no religion. But I was so unhealthy, and suffered so in
every way. Work and anxiety without cease, from when I was twelve years
old. You know all about my father? If I hadn't been clever at figures,
what would have become of me? I should have drudged at some wretched
occupation until the work and the misery of everything killed me."

Hilliard listened intently, his eyes never stirring from her face.

"The change in me began when father came back to us, and I began to
feel my freedom. Then I wanted to get away, and to live by myself. I
thought of London--I've told you how much I always thought of
London--but I hadn't the courage to go there. In Birmingham I began to
change my old habits; but more in what I thought than what I did. I
wished to enjoy myself like other girls, but I couldn't. For one thing,
I thought it wicked; and then I was so afraid of spending a penny--I
had so often known what it was to be in want of a copper to buy food.
So I lived quite alone; sat in my room every evening and read books.
You could hardly believe what a number of books I read in that year.
Sometimes I didn't go to bed till two or three o'clock."

"What sort of books?"

"I got them from the Free Library--books of all kinds; not only novels.
I've never been particularly fond of novels; they always made me feel
my own lot all the harder. I never could understand what people mean
when they say that reading novels takes them 'out of themselves.' It
was never so with me. I liked travels and lives of people, and books
about the stars. Why do you laugh?"

"You escaped from yourself _there_, at all events."

"At last I saw an advertisement in a newspaper--a London paper in the
reading-room--which I was tempted to answer; and I got an engagement in
London. When the time came for starting I was so afraid and
low-spirited that I all but gave it up. I should have done, if I could
have known what was before me. The first year in London was all
loneliness and ill-health. I didn't make a friend, and I starved
myself, all to save money. Out of my pound a week I saved several
shillings--just because it was the habit of my