coughing had
brought her. It was a perfectly-fashioned face, though when Joan had
time to study it, she could see that the colouring was just a little
crudely put on and that it had smudged in the shadows under her eyes
where the tears had lain. She was such a thin, small slip of a girl,
too, little dimpled hands and a baby face under the gold curls. Fanny
opened her eyes at that moment, wide and innocent, and answered Joan's
glance with a wistful smile.

"Thinking of all Mrs. Carew ever said about me?" she asked. "I am not as
bad as she sometimes paints me. Still"--she stood up--"I'll go, if you
would rather I did. Hate to make a nuisance of myself."

She moved slowly--it was, in reality, reluctantly--towards the door, and
Joan came out of her reverie with a start.

"Please don't go," she said quickly. "You must think I am awfully rude,
but really I was not thinking about Mrs. Carew or anything so
disagreeable. I was thinking how pretty you were, and wondering how old
you could be."

The girl at the door stopped and turned back. Laughter filled her eyes,
yet there was a little hint of mockery behind the mirth.

"Go on!" she said, "you and your thoughts! I know just what they were,
my dear; but it doesn't matter to me, I am used to it. Twenty-two, at
your service, mum"--she came a little away from the door and swept Joan
a curtsey--"and everything my own, even my hair, though you mayn't
believe it."

CHAPTER XVI

"Pale dreams arise, swift heart-beats yearn,
Up, up, some ecstasy to learn!
The spirit dares not speak, afar
Youth lures its fellow, like a star."

ANON.

Fanny was a real daughter of joy. The name is given to many who in no
sense of the word near its meaning. To Fanny, to be alive was to laugh;
she had a nature which shook aside the degradation of her profession
much as a small London sparrow will shake the filthy water of the
gutters from off his sky-plumed wings. She brought such an atmosphere of
sunshine and laughter into Joan's life that the other girl grew to lean
on it. The friendship between them ripened very quickly; on Fanny's side
it amounted almost to love. Who knows what starvation of the heart side
of her went to build up all that she felt for Joan? Through the dreary
days that followed, and they sapped in passing at Joan's health and
courage, Fanny was nearly always at hand, with fresh flowers for the
attic, wit