seen Miss Lavinia's sperrit look in at the door. If it isn't
her ghost it's her double."

"Why don't you run outside and settle your mind?"

"'Cause it's impossible it could be her. The girl's at boarding school."

"What's that got to do with it? You go and see."

Hannah hesitated, but at last plucked up her courage and went to the
door. She saw close to the wall some few yards away a somewhat
draggle-tail figure in cloak and hood. Within the hood was Lavinia's
face, though one would hardly recognise it as hers, so white, so drawn,
were the cheeks.

"Saints alive, surely it isn't you, Miss Lavvy?" cried Hannah, clasping
her hands as she ran to the fugitive.

"Indeed it is, worse luck. I'm in sad straits, Hannah. I wouldn't have
come here--I know what mother is--but I couldn't think what to do."

"But good lord--the school--mercy on us child, they haven't turned you
out, have they?"

"No, but they will if I go back. I dursn't do that. I couldn't get in.
I've been robbed of the key. It was inside my reticule that a rogue
snatched from my wrist on London Bridge."

"London Bridge! Gracious! What mischief took 'ee there and at this time
o' the mornin'?"

"I don't know," sighed the girl, half wearily, half pettishly. "I can't
tell you. Don't bother me any more. I'm tired to death. Take me inside
Hannah, or I'll drop. I suppose mother'll be in a fury when she sees me,
but it can't be helped. I don't think I care. It's nothing to do with
her."

Hannah forebore pestering the girl with more questions and led her to
the open door. The waitress had been with Mrs. Fenton in the squalid
days of six months before at the Bedfordbury coffee shop and she well
knew how Lavinia was constantly getting into a scrape, not from
viciousness, but from pure recklessness and love of excitement. Her
mother's treatment of her "to cure her of her ways," as the lady put it,
was simply brutal.

Hannah was not a little afraid of what would happen when Mrs. Fenton set
eyes on her wilful daughter. At the same time, Lavinia was not the same
girl who at Bedfordbury used to run wild, half clad and half starved,
and yet never looked like a beggar, so pretty and so attractive was she.
Six months had developed her into a woman and the training of Miss
Pinwell, the pink of gentility, had given her the modish airs of a lady
of quality. True, her appearance just now had little of this "quality,"
her walk being in fact somewhat limping and one-sided