"Lor', now, did he?" said Agnes. "Wot sort be it, Connie?"
"Dark blue, with blue velvet on it. It looks wery stylish."
"You'd look like a lydy in that sort o' dress," said Agnes. "You've the face of a lydy—that any one can see."
"Have I?" said Connie. She put up her somewhat roughened hand to her smooth little cheeks.
"Yes, you 'ave; and wot I say is this—yer face is yer fortoon. Now, look yer 'ere. We'll stand at this corner till the Westminster 'bus comes up, and then we'll take a penn'orth each, and that'll get us wery near 'ome. Yer don't think as yer father'll be 'ome to-night, Connie?"
"'Tain't likely," replied Connie; "'e seldom comes in until it's time for 'im to go to bed."
"Well then, that's all right. When we get to Westminster, you skid down Adam Street until yer get to yer diggin's; an' then hup you goes and changes yer dress. Into the very genteel dark-blue costoom you gets, and down you comes to yer 'umble servant wot is waitin' for yer below stairs."
This programme was followed out in all its entirety by Connie. The omnibus set the girls down not far from her home. Connie soon reached her room. No father there, no fire in the grate. She turned on the gas and looked around her.
The room was quite a good one, of fair size, and the furniture was not bad of its sort. Peter Harris himself slept on a trundle-bed in the sitting-room, but Connie had a little room all to herself just beyond. Here she kept her small bits of finery, and in especial the lovely new costume which her father had given her.
She was not long in slipping off her working-clothes. Then she washed her face and hands, and brushed back her soft, glistening, pale-golden hair, and put on the dark-blue dress, and her little blue velvet cap to match, and—little guessing how lovely she appeared in this dress, which simply transformed the pretty child into one of quite another rank of life—she ran quickly downstairs.