Flo had at all times a vivid imagination, since her earliest days it had been her dear delight to have day dreams, to build castles in the air. No well-dressed or happy-looking child ever crossed her path that she did not suppose herself that child, that she did not go through in fancy that child’s delightful life. What wardrobes had Flo in imagination, what gay trinkets adorned her brow, her arms, her neck!
What a lovely house she lived in, what heaps of shillings and sovereigns she possessed! Now and then, in her moments of most daring flight, she had even a handle to her name, and people addressed her as “Lady Flo.” But all the time, while happy in these dreams, she had always known them to be but dreams. She was only Flo, working as a translator of old boots and shoes, down in a dark cellar—she had no fine dresses, no pretty ornaments, no money, she was hungry and cold, and generally miserable, and as far as she could possibly see there was never any chance of her being anything else.
She generally came down from her high imaginings to this stern reality, with a great burst of tears, only one sad thought comforting her, to be alive at all she could never be worse than she was, she could never sink any lower.
She was mistaken.
Last night, lying all alone and waiting for Dick’s trial, lying hour after hour hoping and longing for sleep to visit her, and hoping and longing in vain, she had proved that she was mistaken. Lower depths of sorrow and desolation could be reached, and she had reached them. Through no fault of hers, the stern hand of the law was stretched out to grasp her one treasure, to take her brother away.
Dick had broken a promise sealed on dying lips—Dick was a thief. Henceforth and for ever the brand of the prison would be on him.
When, their punishment over, he and Jenks were free once again, nothing now, no power, or art, or persuasion, on her part could keep those two apart. Together they would plunge into deeper and more daring crime, and come eventually to the bad and miserable end her mother had so often described to her. It was plain that she and Dick must separate.
When the boys were released from prison, it was plain that she and they could not live together as of old. The honest could not live with the dishonest. Her mother had often told her that, had often warned her to be sure, happen what might, to choose honest companions. So Flo knew that unless she too broke her word to mother, they must part—Dick and she must part. And yet how much she loved him—how much her mother had loved him!
He was not grave like her; he had never carried an old head on young shoulders; he was the merriest, brightest, funniest boy in the world—one of those throw-all-care-to-the-winds little fellows, who invariably give pleasure even in the darkest and most shady homes. His elastic spirits never flagged, his gay heart never despaired, he whistled over his driest crusts, he turned somersaults over his supperless hours—he had for many a day been the light of two pairs of eyes. True, he had often been idle, and lately had left the brunt of the daily labour, if not all of it, to Flo. But the mother heart of the little sister, who was in reality younger than himself, accepted all this as a necessity.
Was he not a boy? and was it not one of the first laws of nature that all girls should work and all boys should play?