'I—I think I'll just get one more,' Floss said, and almost staggered to the bucket. 'It's quite easy to steal it now; the camp's left all by itself. Oh, I must get one more—look at that one's eyes.'
But Bart picked her up in his arms, and started back to the house with her.
'You'll just come and lie down quietly,' he said. 'I never saw anything like your face. You'll be ill like father. Poor little Floss! poor little old Floss!'
'There—there would have been half a bucket more,' said Floss, 'only I nearly fell once, and it s-s-spilled.' She was sobbing on his shoulder, sobbing heart-brokenly, hard little Floss who never cried.
Hermie took the child from her brother at the door.
'I'll undress her and sponge her,' she said; 'that will cool her a little, but I quite expect she will be ill like father. Well, it is all Challis's fault.'
In an hour Floss lay asleep, the fierce heat of her cheeks a little faded, and Hermie's hands were idle again.
Miss Browne was helping Lizzie to fold the poor rags of clothes from the wash; the father still begged to be left alone; outside Bart and Roly still threshed monotonously at the fire.
Hermie went into the tiny bedroom that had been run up for her because the house was too small—the bedroom that the mother had been so pleased to hear was built. She found herself looking in the glass at herself, looking sadly, listlessly.
She saw a girl, thin, undeveloped, with a delicately cut face, and shadows lying like ink-smears beneath her eyes. Her womanhood was coming, and she had no strength to meet it; at her age she should have had rounded limbs and pleasing curves. She seemed to recognise this, as she gazed unhappily at her angles. Her hair pleased her, for the sun was making a glory of it; there was a nameless beauty about her face that she recognised vaguely.