LITMIR.BIZ

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it rushes down the innermost slums, drives back the foul vapours, till the air is almost as that over the mid-ocean, and has a taste of the salt in it, bringing colour to the cheeks of pallid children of the alleys, and jollity to all who are still susceptible to it.

      "Mary, I expect an important letter to arrive here by next post for me. I must have it as soon as possible. Hurry off with it the moment it comes. Here is your fare. Take train to Ludgate Hill and bring it to me at the office. Don't loiter mind; bring it at once."

      It was Mr. Grimm who spoke as he took up his hat and umbrella after breakfast, preparatory to going city-wards.

      "All right, father," replied Mary, as she removed the breakfast things, and the next minute the little lawyer was out of the house and the door slammed behind him—off to his pettifogging, lying, and cheating in his offices, which were in a narrow street off the Ludgate Hill end of Fleet Street.

      Mary continued to remove the cups, saucers, and plates, in a rather nonchalant manner.

      The stout red-faced second wife of Grimm sat in the arm-chair eyeing her not over kindly for a minute or so, and then in a harsh voice addressed the girl:

      "You minx! you minx!" working herself up into a passion; "you do it on purpose to aggravate me, I know you do."

      "Do what?" asked Mary, calmly.

      "I've been watching you these ten minutes—dawdling, dawdling, dawdling, as slow as you can; that's what it is. Hurry up now over those things. What do I give you your food for, and your clothes too, do you think? To work: and work for your living you shall as sure as my name's Grimm. Hurry up; don't stand there like a stuck pig, with your sulky putty face. Do you hear?"

      This was a long speech for Mrs. Grimm, and she halted for breath and further inspiration.

      Not a muscle of Mary's face moved, but she did hurry up a little; only for a few seconds though, when, altering her mind, she stopped suddenly in her work and said in a deliberate voice:

      "I suppose you think I ought to be very grateful to you, don't you?"

      "What! grateful, grateful!" ejaculated the angry woman, almost too surprised at this exhibition of spirit to talk distinctly. "What on earth do you mean, you little—you little—"

      But before she could find an epithet forcible enough for the occasion, Mary interrupted her in the same cool, unimpassioned voice as before: for she did not fear, and had learned to despise, her low-minded step-mother.

      "Yes, grateful! and for what, if you please? I have worked hard here all my life. You daren't make the hired slavey work as you make me; and my father uses me as a clerk: and where will he get a clerk to copy so much a day as I do? Slavey and clerk in one I am, Mrs. Grimm, and for just enough food to keep body and soul together, and your worn-out clothes—you have got a cheap bargain in me I think," and the girl, losing some of her sang-froid in the memory of her wrongs, carried out the tray and banged the door behind her.

      It was seldom that Mary bandied words with her stepmother in this way; possibly the glorious weather without had stirred her up to this ebullition, for the South West wind can excite us to honest indignation as well as to jollity.

      Mrs. Grimm was what she would herself have described as bursting with rage. When the girl returned in a minute or so, cool and pale as ever, she smiled slightly when she perceived her stepmother's now purple visage. It is pleasant to behold one's enemy apoplectic with vain fury.

      Then Mrs. Grimm broke out into the following fine oratorical display, panting at short intervals for breath, "You wretch: to talk to me like that:—I'll let your father know of this when he comes back—we'll see if a little less food will cool down your hot blood, my girl. … Go out in the streets—go out, and see if with all your working and clerking anyone will take you in, though you are such a good bargain;—go out, and see if you won't starve; go. Why, with that ugly putty face of yours you could not even—"

      She was about to be still coarser in her remarks, as was not unusual with her, but Mary, flushing slightly, interrupted her mid-way.

      "I know all that, Mrs. Grimm; I know how hard it would be to find work if I went from here. You don't think if it were otherwise that I'd stay another half-minute, do you?"

      "Go out this minute and clean up all those breakfast things," shouted Mrs. Grimm, rising from her chair, beside herself with rage.

      But Mary stood looking at her with folded arms aware that nothing could be more irritating to this violent woman than her cool behaviour. Whether she would have refused to obey, how much further her mutinous spirit would have carried her is uncertain; for at that moment there came a postman's knock at the door, and the servant brought in a letter and handed it to Mrs. Grimm.

      "That's the letter your father wants," she said, throwing it to Mary. "Be off with it; be off with it, you little devil, and no dawdling, mind, no staring about. Don't imagine that anyone will admire that silly face of yours."

      Mary did not feel this Parthian shaft as she hurried off, only too glad to escape into the open air, to be free for an hour.

      She walked fast down the streets, and then turned to the right towards the Brixton railway station. Her step was elastic, for she was young, and though her youth was ever being crushed down, it but lay latent, ready to spring up when opportunity offered. The sunshine and wind of this June day brought it out. She was happy for the time; there was a sparkle of delight in her eye—delight for this short liberty which was in so strong contrast to her usual drudgery.

      In five minutes she was outside the station; then suddenly the joy faded from her face, and she stopped short, as she looked with dismay through the archway into the dark passage by which the railway is approached, appearing so cold and dismal after the outer warmth and light.

      She realized that her walk was over now—she must get into the train. In a few rapid minutes she would be at Ludgate Hill—then in her father's office, to sit perhaps through all the afternoon in the hateful little inner room that she knew so well, and into which clients were never shown, to copy papers till her head ached. Ah, the misery of it!

      She hesitated before taking her ticket. Oh, for a half-hour's more freedom! She trembled with the strength of her desire. She yearned, as no one can who has not lived her life, for a respite, for but a little more time, to let her youth be filled with the glory of that summer day.

      Her head seemed to turn with the temptations and ideas that crowded one on the other upon her. "Why should she go by train at all? Why not walk all the way to Ludgate Hill? What was to prevent her? Fear of her father—No!" and at the thought her head became defiantly erect, and her expression more obstinate. "Fear, she didn't fear."

      Then in a moment her mind was made up; the impulse conquered; she turned her back suddenly on the station and walked off, a gleam of guilty joy in her eyes.

      Having gone so far in revolt, she, as is natural, went yet a step further, and loitered quite slowly through the streets, looking into shop windows and amusing herself by studying the people who passed her, all which was very different from her usual behaviour when out of doors.

      She felt like a real girl now, and the childish joy and excitement that flushed her cheek and shone in her eyes gave a rare beauty to her face, such as it had perhaps never worn before, so that passers looked with admiration and wonder at the fairy-like girl who, so shabbily and quaintly dressed, yet so graceful and so pretty, tripped lightly by them, the very model for a Cinderella.

      She reached Blackfriars Bridge, and in the middle of it she stopped for a few minutes, leaning over the parapet, gazing up the grand sunny river, while the fresh breeze fanned her cheek and ruffled her soft hair. She was prolonging the short sweet spell of liberty: and when she turned at last from that glorious view, it was with very slow steps that she walked towards her father's office.

      When she came to Fleet Street, and was at the point where the narrow street in which the office was situated branches from the great thoroughfare, she stood still again, while she put her hand in

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