ed a great deal
in their high-pitched, twanging voices about their friends and
relations who danced at the Varolium, Panjandrum, and other music
halls, friends of whom, since she herself aspired to higher things,
Pollyooly had but a poor opinion. Moreover, many of them powdered
their little faces, penciled their eyebrows, and deepened the roses in
their cheeks with rose-carmine or rouge; and to Pollyooly, a daughter
of Muttle Deeping, these practices were repugnant.

But she had formed one friendship among them, a friendship born of her
protective instinct, with Millicent Saunders, a frail, pale wisp of a
child, whose black eyes looked very big indeed in her thin face, framed
in a mass of black hair. The other pupils were apt to look down on
Millicent, because, though few of them ran to finery, Millicent was
shabby indeed. Pollyooly was quite unaffected by this, for in the days
when she had lived in the dreadful fear that she and the Lump might be
driven by necessity into the workhouse, she had gone shabby herself.
She knew that Millicent's mother, who had once been a dancer, was now a
charwoman, often out of work, and in feeble health. It was Millicent's
perpetual complaint that she herself was so slow growing up to the age
at which she would be earning money and supporting her ailing mother.
Down the vista of the future she saw a splendid vision in which her
mother should always have a bloater with her tea. To Pollyooly
Millicent always looked hungry.

It was Millicent's great pleasure to sit with the Lump on her knee in
the intervals of their work, mothering him as long as he would suffer
it; and it was her privilege to take his left hand as Pollyooly led him
from Soho, across the dangerous crossings to the safe stretch of the
embankment from Charing-Cross to the Temple. As they went Pollyooly
and Millicent talked of the price of provisions and the trials of
housekeeping.

But for the whole week before Pollyooly's trip to Devon Millicent had
not been to the class. Pollyooly enquired and Madame Correlli enquired
the reason for her absence, but none of the other pupils could tell
them. It was now ten days since Pollyooly had seen her, and she was
feeling anxious indeed about her.

Then, after the class was over, as she was leading the Lump down St.
Martin's Lane on their way to the embankment he projected an arm and
broke his placid and perpetual silence with one of his rare, but
pregnant grunts. Pollyool