ke this, which
must needs widen itself out in like fashion to be felt at all. Her
mosses and minerals, her pressed leaves and flowers, her odds and ends
of art and science and prettiness which she gathered about her, her
industries and benevolences,--these were herself. Out of these she was
only a little elderly thread-paper of a woman, of no apparent account
among crowds of other people, and with scarcely enough of bodily bulk or
presence to take any positive foothold anywhere.

What she might have seemed, in the days when her hair was golden, and
her little figure plump, and the very unclassical features rounded and
rosy with the bloom and grace of youth, was perhaps another thing; but
now, with her undeniable "front," and cheeks straightened into lines
that gave you the idea of her having slept all night upon both of them,
and got them into longitudinal wrinkles that all day was never able to
wear out; above all, with her curious little nose (that was the exact
expression of it), sharply and suddenly thrusting itself among things in
general from the middle plane of her face with slight preparatory hint
of its intention,--you would scarcely charge her, upon suspicion, with
any embezzlement or making away of charms intrusted to her keeping in
the time gone by.

This morning, moreover, she had somehow given herself a scratch upon
the tip of this odd, investigating member; and it blushed for its
inquisitiveness under a scrap of thin pink adhesive plaster.

Sin Saxon caught sight of her as she came. "Little Miss Netticoat!" she
cried, just under her breath, "_with_ a fresh petticoat, _and_ a red
nose!" Then, changing her tone with her quotation,--

"'Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,
Thou'st met me in a luckless hour!'

Thou always dost! What _hast_ thou gone and got thyself up so for, just
as I was almost persuaded to be good? Now--_can_ I help that?" And she
dropped her folded hands in her lap, exhaled a little sigh of vanquished
goodness, and looked round appealingly to her companions.

"It's only," said Miss Craydocke, reaching them a trifle out of breath,
"this little parcel,--something I promised to Prissy Hoskins,--and
_would_ you just go round by the Cliff and leave it for me?"

"Oh, I'm afraid of the Cliff!" cried Florrie Arnall. "Creggin's horses
backed there the other day. It's horribly dangerous."

"It's three quarters of a mile round," suggested the driver.

"The 'little red' might take