return,"
said Kitty.

And Florence promised, thinking Kitty a very good-natured, agreeable
girl as she did so, and then Kitty turned slowly back to the house and
Florence found herself alone. She was driving in a hired chaise to
Hilchester railway-station. She had said good-bye to Kitty and to Mrs.
Clavering, and her earnest wish was that the week might spread itself
into two or three, and that she could banish all thought of Kitty and
Mrs. Clavering and Cherry Court School from her mind.

"For, although I mean to win the Scholarship--yes, I shall win it; I
have made up my mind on that point--I cannot help more or less hating
Kitty Sharston, and Mrs. Clavering, and the school itself," thought the
girl. "But there, I will forget every unpleasant thing now. I have
not seen the little Mummy for a whole year; it will be heavenly to kiss
her again. If there is anyone in the world whom I truly, truly love it
is the dear little Mummy."

All during her hot journey across England to the cool and delightful
watering-place of Dawlish, Florence thought more and more of her
mother. She was an only child, her father having died when she was
five years old, and Mrs. Aylmer had always been terribly poor, and
Florence had always known what it was to stint and screw and do without
those things which were as the breath of life to most girls. And
Florence was naturally not at all a contented girl, and she had fought
against her position, and disliked having to stint and screw, and she
had hated her shabby dress and unwieldy boots and ugly hats and coarse
fare.

But one portion of her lot abundantly contented her--she had no fault
to find with her mother. The little Mummy was all that was perfection.
For her mother she would have done almost as much in her own way as
Kitty would do for her father in hers.

And now her heart beat high and her spirits rose as she approached
nearer hour by hour the shabby little home where her mother lived.

It was in the cool of a hot summer's evening that the train at last
drew up at Dawlish, and Mrs. Aylmer stood on the platform waiting to
receive her daughter.

Mrs. Aylmer was a plain dumpling sort of little body, with a perfectly
round face, and small beady black eyes. She had a high color in each
of her cheeks and fluffy black hair pushed away from her high forehead.
She was dressed in widow's weeds, which were somewhat rusty, and she
now came forward with a beaming face to welcome Flo