d on the
head she poised the bonnet, and tied the ribbons under the delightful
chin. And then, after a moment of hard scrutiny, danced and whistled,
and cried again: "How beautiful I am! How pretty I am!"

She was. She positively did not look a bit like a drudge. She was not
the Florrie of the kitchen and of the sack-apron, but a young, fledged
creature with bursting bosom who could trouble any man by the capricious
modesty of a gaze downcast. The miraculous skirt, odious on Hilda, had
the brightness of a new skirt. 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. After all, why shouldn't Florrie...?" And she was a little
jealous of Florrie, and a little envious of her, because Florrie had the
naturalness of a savage or of an animal, unsophisticated by ideals of
primness. Hilda was disconcerted at the discovery of Florrie as an
authentic young woman. Florrie, more than seven years her junior! She
felt experienced, and indulgent as the old are indulgent. For the first
time in her life she did honestly feel old. And she asked herself--half
in dismay: "Florrie has got thus far. Where am _I_? What am _I_ doing?"
It was upsetting.

At length Florrie took off the bonnet and ran upstairs, and shut the
door of her attic. Apparently she meant to improve the bonnet by some
touch. After waiting nervously a few moments, the aged Hilda slipped
silently downstairs, and through the kitchen, and so by the garden,
where with their feet in mire the hare trees were giving signs of hope
under the soft blue sky, into the street. Florrie would never know that
she had been watched.

III

Ten minutes later, when she went into the office of Dayson & Co., Hilda
was younger than ever. It was a young, fragile girl, despite the dark
frown of her intense seriousness, who with accustomed gestures poked the
stove, and hung bonnet and jacket on a nail and then sat down to the
loaded desk; it was an ingenuous girl absurdly but fiercely anxious to
shoulder t