“If you please, miss, I wanted to speak to you. I have got a little girl here, and I want to send her to school, only I have no shoes for her.”
“Why, surely, if she can run about here on the heath, she can go to school,” said Flora.
“Oh! but there is all the other children to point at her. The poor thing would be daunted, you see, miss; if I could but get some friend to give her a pair of shoes, I’d send her in a minute. I want her to get some learning; as I am always saying, I’d never keep her away, if I had but got the clothes to send her in. I never lets her be running on the common, like them Halls, as it’s a shame to see them in nice frocks, as Mrs. Hall got by going hypercriting about.”
“What is your name?” said Richard, cutting her short.
“Watts, if you please, sir; we heard there was good work up here, sir, and so we came; but I’d never have set foot in it if I had known what a dark heathenish place it is, with never a Gospel minister to come near it,” and a great deal more to the same purpose.
Mary whispered to Flora something about having outgrown her boots, but Flora silenced her by a squeeze of the hand, and the two friends of Cocksmoor felt a good deal puzzled.
At last Flora said, “You will soon get her clothed if she comes regularly to school on Sundays, for she will be admitted into the club; I will recommend her if she has a good character and comes regularly. Good-morning, Mrs. Watts. Now we must go, or it will be dark before we get home.” And they walked hastily away.
“Horrid woman!” was Ethel’s exclamation.
“But Flora,” said innocent Mary, “why would you not let me give the little girl my boots?”
“Perhaps I may, if she is good and comes to school, said Flora.