near you, that I am. Look at mine. They were under Kathie’s bed all night, and they seem to smell of the faver. Oh, I’ll get ’em off ef I sell ’em chape. You lend me a coil of wire, honey, and you’ll see how I’ll smarten ’em up.”
Jill handed the wire to her neighbour with scarcely a remark. Her thoughts were far away with Nat, and the home they might soon have together. She wondered if they might really dare to take that flat next to Mrs Stanley’s – if by any possible means they could justify for themselves the extravagance of paying seven shillings a week for their rooms. Then how would her mother do without her? Who would help her mother when she got those queer attacks of pain, those unsupportable hours of agony which had hitherto found relief only in the one way?
Jill knew that it was very wrong of her mother to drink. The girl’s own nature was so upright, so sweet, so high, that it was absolutely repulsive to her to see any one in the state in which she often now discovered her poor mother. The aim and object of her life was to hide the disgrace of her mother’s intemperate fits from the rest of the world; she called them by any name but the true one. She was ready to cover them with any amount of lies if necessary; she would have knocked down any one who accused her mother of getting drunk; even Mrs Robinson herself, in her repentant moments, did not dare to call a spade a spade – did not dare to speak of what she had done by its true name. Jill never blamed her, she put it all down to the pain and misery. It seemed to her there was no remedy left to her mother but to drown her sufferings in drink, and yet the fact cast a shadow over her own life, and caused her to sigh heavily, even though Nat was coming in the evening, and they could talk about their wedding-day, which was so soon to arrive.
As she arranged her flowers with deft fingers this morning she made up her mind that she would say yes to Nat. She would be in the same house with her mother, and could still look after her. As to the boys, they were both of them doing for themselves. Jill scarcely gave them a thought at all in making her arrangements.
Yes, she would marry Nat, and trust to his never discovering that ugly secret about her mother.
She had just finished the arrangement of her basket, picturesquely heaping her masses of pink, white, and yellow poppies at one side, and her roses and forget-me-nots at another, when a tall girl, dressed in the costume of the Flower Girls’ Guild, came up with a basket of flowers on her arm and spoke to her.
She was a handsome girl, and looked striking in her neat grey dress and scarlet apron. Her hair was of a pale gold, her eyes large and blue; the expression of her somewhat pale face a little austere. Her basket was full of lovely fresh flowers, but although they were superior to Jill’s in quality, they did not make nearly so fine a show.
“Is that you, Jill?” she called out. “Nat told me you were here. Why ain’t your mother with you? Ain’t she well?”
“No, she has a fit of that old pain over her,” responded Jill. “I left her lying down. The pain takes a deal out of her, and I thought she had best be quiet.”
“Don’t she see no doctor? We has a splendid one belonging to the Guild; ef you and your mother would only join, you’d get a heap o’ good out of it, Jill. But you’re that obstinate, and when the best thing in the world is offered to you, you won’t so much as open your eyes to see it. I wonder Nat holds on to you, that I do.”
Jill smiled, reddened, and was about to reply, when the Irishwoman called out in her brilliant tones:
“What I say of Nat Carter is this, that he’s the luckiest gossoon in all London to have got the purtiest bit of a colleen to say she’ll wed him. Why, you ain’t got looks lit to hold a candle to her, Susy Carter, even though you are Nat’s sister.”
“Well, well,” said Susan, in a slightly patronising manner, “we must each of us go our own gait. If Jill and her mother won’t join the Guild, I can’t force ’em. Maybe you’ll do it later on, if Nat wishes it, Jill. And, oh, what do you think, here’s a bit o’ luck; I has just got that stand I was waiting for so long near the Marble Arch. The girl wot had it died yesterday, and I’ve stepped into her shoes, and a right good think I’ll make of it. I must be off now, or I’ll lose customers. Good-bye, Jill. Oh, by-the-way, you might as well mass these colours for me. I can’t make my basket look like yourn, however hard I try.”
Susy Carter put her basket on the ground as she spoke. Jill bent over it, re-arranged the flowers without a word, and returned it to her.
“Thank you – thank you,” she cried delightedly. “Why, Jill, what fingers you has! Who but yourself would have thought of putting these pink peonies close to all them crimson poppies, and then throwing up the colour with this bunch of green. Oh, it’s daring, but it’s lovely; it’ll fetch like anything. Now I’m off You get your mother to see a doctor, Jill.”
“No, I won’t,” said Jill, shortly, “I don’t believe in ’em, neither does mother.”
“Right you are, honey,” exclaimed Molly Maloney, “I don’t hold by docthors, nayther. If my little Kathleen dies of the faver – bless her, the darlint! – why, I know as it’s the will of the Almighty. But ef the docthor came and gave her his pizens – what is it, miss – what now?”
“Do you say you have a child down in fever?” said Susy Carter, speaking in a quick, passionate voice.
The Irishwoman was lounging with her back against the wall. She now started upright, and spoke defiantly.
“And why mayn’t I have my darlint child down with the faver?” she demanded, her eyes darkening with anger.
“Did you keep those flowers in the room with the sick child all night?”
“Yes, my purty, I did. Would you like a bunch? you shall have it chape. A ha’p’ny for this rose; it’ll look iligant pinned on the front of your dress. Now, then, only a ha’p’ny. Why, there ain’t no chaper flowers in the whole of London.”
“It’s very wicked of you to sell those flowers,” said Susy. “You may give the fever to a lot of other people by doing so. That’s the good of belonging to our Guild. We have a beautiful cool room to keep our flowers in at night, so that no one can be poisoned by them. They keep fresh, and they last, and they don’t carry horrid diseases about with them. It’s very wicked of you to sell those flowers. You ought to throw them away.”
She picked up her basket as she spoke and marched off.
Molly sat down, muttering angry words under her breath.
“I wonder you takes up with the likes of her, Jill,” she said, when she had cooled down sufficiently to address a few words to her companion.
Jill, who was in a day-dream, looked round with a start.
“Take up with whom?” she said.
“That consated bit of a colleen, Susy Carter. You’re goin’ to marry her brother. Seems to me you’re throwing yourself away. Why, honey, you’re illigant enough and handsome enough to be any man’s chice.”
“Yes, but I love Nat,” interrupted Jill. “I’m not marrying Susy – I don’t much care for Susy. Yes, ma’am? These bunches are twopence each, these a penny. I’ll give you this bunch of poppies for sixpence, ma’am, and put some green with it.”
A lady who had just come up from the Underground Railway had stopped, arrested by the beauty of Jill’s flowers. She was holding a prettily dressed little girl of about six years old by the hand.
The child was all in white. She had cloudy golden
