," she vouchsafed, brightly daring.

"But your mother----" the governess said, then stopped and turned away
her head; she could not bring herself to tell the child the news of the
mother she had heard that morning, since school began.

So Dora went, sedately for the first few steps, afterwards with a happy
rush, the curls dancing on her shoulders.

"Yer mother is a-dyin', she 'ont be here long; you must try to be a
better gal"; how often of late had that phrase offended her ears! She
had met such announcements with a fury of denial, with storms of tears.
She had rushed to her mother with wild reproach and complaint. "Why
don't ye tell 'm yu ain't a-dyin', stids o' layin' there, that mander.
They're allust a-tazin' of me?"

To-day no one had said the hated words; and mother would like to hear
how teacher had "kep'" her at her side, and coaxed her hair. "I ha'n't
niver seed her du that to Gladus, nor none on 'em," she would say, and
would remind her mother how these less fortunate girls had not her "hid
o' hair."

So, her steps quickened with joyful anticipation, she came running
across the meadow in which was her home.

"Here come Dora," Mrs Barrett, who had been busy in Mrs Green's room,
said to the neighbour who had helped her. Both women peeped through the
lowered blind. "She'll come poundin' upstairs to her mother. There
ain't no kapin' of 'r away; and a nice how-d'ye-do there'll be!"

The elder boy, Jim, whose ugly little face Dora's was said to resemble,
was standing against the gate of the neglected garden. He did not shout
at her, nor throw a stone at her, in the fashion of his usual greeting,
but pulled open the rickety gate as she came up.

"Mother's dead," he whispered, and looked at her with curiosity.

"She ain't, then," Dora said. He drew his head back to avoid the blow
she aimed at it, and shut the gate after her.

Jack, an ugly urchin of five, the youngest of the family, was sitting
on the doorstep, hammering with the iron-shod heel of his heavy boot a
hazel nut he had found on his way home. The nut, instead of cracking,
was being driven deep into the moist earth. He did not desist from his
employment, or lift his head.

"Father's gone for mother's corffin," he said.

The howl he gave when Dora knocked him off the step brought Mrs Barrett
upon the scene. She pulled the girl off the fallen Jack with a gentler
touch than usual.

"You come along upstairs, along o' me," she said.