"A little bird! I say, Cherrie, you've lost your red cheeks! Doesn't Prince Edward's Island agree with you?"
Cherrie had lost her bright bloom of color; but save that she was much thinner and paler, and far less gaudily dressed, she was the same Cherrie of old.
"Agree with me!" exclaimed Cherrie, in rather a loudly-resentful tone, considering that they were on the street. "I hate the place, and I am nearly moped to death in it. I never was so miserable in all my life as I have been since I came here!"
"Then why didn't you leave it?" inquired Mr. Blake.
"Leave it!" reiterated Cherrie, like an angry echo. "It's very easy to say leave it; but when you have no money or nothing, it's not quite so easy doing it. I've been used shamefully; and if ever I get back to Speckport, I'll let some of the folks there know it, too! Did he send you?"
"Who?"
"You know well enough! Captain Cavendish!"
"He send me!" said Val. "I should think not. There isn't a soul in Speckport knows whether you are alive or dead; and he takes care they shan't, either. I have been trying to find you out ever since you left; and I have asked Captain Cavendish scores of times, but he always vowed he knew nothing about you—that you had run off after Charley Marsh. It was only by chance I saw a letter from you to him the other day, posted here, and I started off in a trice. Why didn't you write to your folks, Cherrie?"
"I daren't. He wouldn't let me. He told me, if I didn't stay here and keep quiet, he never would have anything more to say to me. I have been shamefully used!"—and here Cherrie began to cry on the street—"and I wish I was dead. There!"
"Perhaps you will before long," said Val, significantly.