“Yes, do,” said Florence. “But oh! I am a miserable girl!”
She cried long and hard, and when at last Mr Timmins came to fetch her, her face was quite disfigured by her bitter sobbing.
“Come, come,” he said, “this will never do. You will smile at this dark hour some day, Miss Florence. But now we have just barely time to reach the railway station. I am going to send Andrews with you as far as Langdale, as I prefer your not travelling alone.” Florence could not help thinking how strange the circumstances of their lives had become. They were very poor girls. They were absolutely without a penny in the world—that is, almost without a penny; and yet they had to travel first-class, and one girl would not be allowed to go back to Langdale alone. She turned to Mr Timmins. An idea came to her.
“If we are to be poor,” she said, “and to earn our living, why don’t you let us begin at once? It is far, far kinder than allowing us to spend our last penny and then starting us on this cold world with nothing to protect us against its rebuffs.”
“But you, Florence,” said the old man, “have secured the love of an honest heart. You surely, at least, are not to be pitied.”
“That is true,” she said; and the thought certainly did give her comfort. Michael—dear, handsome Michael—wished her to be as poor as a church mouse. Well, she was: there was no doubt of that.
As Mr Timmins was parting from her at the railway station, he slipped ten pounds into her hand.
“You must have a little ready money to spend,” he said. “Be exceedingly careful of it.”
“Is it part of our seventy-five pounds?” she asked.
He nodded. There was a strange expression on his face.