Susy was not lovable, nor did she greatly love anyone but herself. She was ambitious and intended to rise in the world. Even a London flower girl can have ambition. As in all other callings, that of the flower girl has many grades. Between the poor, little, sloppy, ragged victim, who hawks miserable, withered flowers, reeking with stale vegetation and the infection of badly ventilated rooms, and such a flower girl as Susy Carter, there is a very vast gulf fixed.
Susy heard of the Flower Girls’ Guild, she was one of the first to join this admirable band, she delighted in the sanitary conditions imposed upon her. She paid her shilling a week regularly, and enjoyed all the advantages of the room where the flowers were kept at night, and the nice wash which she could give herself there in the morning.
Nature had made Susy fair and pretty, and the becoming uniform of the Guild suited her to perfection. Since she had joined it she had become more popular as a flower girl than ever. Her flowers were better in quality, and the ladies who bought from her, finding this fact out, were only too glad to come to her again; week after week she was steadily putting away money. If this state of things went on Susy hoped that in a few years she might have saved enough either to marry a respectable costermonger or to start a barrow, or even a shop for herself. Susy had not the least idea of marrying for love, she was thoroughly satisfied with her present life, which had a certain amount of excitement without undue hardship.
Nat and Susy Carter had neither father nor mother, they were somewhat alike in appearance, and had certain traits of character in common. They were both ambitious, hard-working, honest, respectable, but where Susy’s soul was small and crabbed, shrinking indeed from its normal size from want of any due care or attention, Nat’s was strong and brave, for Nat’s soul was saved by the intense love which he had felt for some years now for Jill. Nat and Susy shared the same rooms, and these rooms were by no means to their taste. They were in a low part of the town, not exactly in Drury Lane, but in that poor neighbourhood. The situation was most convenient, not far from the market and in the very thick of the life which they were obliged to lead, but the rooms occupied by the brother and sister, though fairly clean in themselves, were by no means to the taste of either. Nat would not have stayed there but for the hope that he and Jill would soon set up housekeeping together, and Susy quite made her mind to share Nat’s home whenever he made it. She was sitting on this particular Sunday afternoon in their little kitchen, leaning somewhat discontentedly out of the window, and wishing that the long dull Sabbath would come to an end, when to her surprise the door of the room was suddenly opened and Nat came in. Susy could not help giving a start of astonishment. Nat had left her some hours ago with a distinct understanding that he would not return until night. Susy had given him a slightly contemptuous look when he had told her what his day’s work would be.
“Yes, yes,” she muttered, “don’t tell me no more; you’ll be a good Samaritan all the morning, and a lover all the arternoon. Each one to their taste, don’t tell me no more.”
“It ’ud do you good, Susy, to have a lover of your own,” said Nat, in reply to these bitter words; “a right good ’ansome feller as ’ud draw the ’eart out of yer, and make yer feel.”
“’Ow?” said Susy, looking at him with mocking eyes.
Nat reddened. A vision of Jill as she had looked the night before with the moonlight shining all over her passionate, tender face flashed before him.
“I can’t say,” he replied. “You wait and see.”
“No, I’ll never see that sight,” said Susy; “there ain’t a man living as ’ud make a fool on me. Give me a tidy bit of money, and I don’t mind what the man is like.”