She had her own slight but essential toilet preparations too to make. Her poor ragged cotton frock had got a rinse, and was drying by a small fire, which, hot as the day was, was lit for the purpose, and she meant to look up mother’s old bonnet, and if it could be made presentable, wear it.
She hauled it out of a pasteboard band-box, and sat down on her cobbler’s stool to contemplate it.
It was a very shaky, indeed fall-to-pieces, affair. A bonnet that had once been of a delicate white, but in its journey through life, having had to put up at several pawn-shops, had now reached a hue as far removed from that colour as possible.
Flo, however, thought it quite fit to wear. She snipped it, and dusted it, and by the aid of some pins secured the battered old crown in its place.
She unfolded carefully every leaf of the gorgeous bunch of artificial flowers with which mother had ornamented it before she died. That bunch, consisting of some full-blown roses, tulips, and poppies, which at a second-hand finery establishment had cost twopence, and to purchase which mother had once done without her dinner, that bunch was placed so as to rest on Flo’s forehead, while two dirty ribbons of flaming yellow were to do duty under her chin.
But while she worked she thought of Janey’s words. She was sorry Janey had turned crusty, for undoubtedly the words were pretty, prettier than any of mother’s old songs. She would have liked to know more about them!
”‘I’m glad I hever saw the day,’” sang Flo, catching the air with her quick ear and voice.
But then she stopped to consider.
What day was she glad to see?
Well! no day that she knew of, unless it was to-morrow, the Derby Day.