"Impertinent," said Mrs. Fleming. "Here am I ready to offer you the shelter of my roof, the excellent food which always prevails in this establishment, and fifteen pounds a year, and yet you talk in that lofty tone. You are a very silly young woman. I am quite sure you won't suit me."
"It is a foregone conclusion," said Florence, indulging in a little pertness as she saw that the situation would no more suit her than she it. She walked towards the door.
"I will wish you good morning," she said.
"Stay one moment. What can you teach?"
"Nothing that will suit you."
"I must certainly remove my name from that registry-office. I stipulated that I should see godly maidens of spotless character. You, who evidently have a shady past, dare to come to me to offer your polluted services! I will wish you good morning."
"I have already wished you good morning," said Florence. She turned without another word, and, not deigning to ask the assistance of the charwoman, left the house.
When she got to the street she was trembling.
"It is hard for girls like me to earn their own bread," she said to herself. "What is to be done? Nearer and nearer am I getting to the edge of the cliff. What is to be done?"
She returned home, and spent the rest of the day in a state of intense depression. Her attic was so suffocating that she could not stay in it, but there was a general sitting-room downstairs, and she went there and contrived to make herself as wretched as she could over a well-thumbed novel which another girl had left behind her on the previous evening.