Chapter 6 - Page 2

"Oh, anything you like."

Now it happened that her drawing lessons had always given her more
pleasure than anything else at school, but owing to Joe Harrod's having
taken her away as soon as he was allowed to do so, they had not continued
long. Still, even in a short time she had made some progress; and even
after leaving school she had continued to find a mournful pleasure in
depicting leaf and flower forms. Left to choose her own subject, she
naturally began sketching a flower--a-rosebud, half-open, with leaves.

"Don't hurry, Fan, as you did with your reading. The slower you are the
better it will be," said Miss Starbrow, taking up a volume and beginning
to read, or pretending to read, for her eyes were on the face of the girl
most of the time.

Fan, happily unconscious of the other's regard, gave eight or ten minutes
to her drawing, and then Miss Starbrow took it in her hands to examine
it.

"This is really very well done," she said, "but what in goodness' name
did they teach you drawing for!' What would be the use of it after
leaving school? Well, yes, it might be useful in one way. It astonishes
me to think how you were trying to live, Fan. You were certainly not fit
for that hard rough work, and would have starved at it. You were made,
body and mind, in a more delicate mould, and for something better. I
think that with all you have learnt at school, and with your appearance,
especially with those truthful eyes of yours and that sweet voice, you
might have got a place as nursery governess, to teach small children, or
something of that sort. Why did you go starving about the streets, Fan?"

"But no one would take me with such clothes, ma'am. They wouldn't look at
me or speak to me even in the little shops where I went to ask for work."

Miss Starbrow uttered a curious little laugh.

"What a strange thing it seems," she said, "that a few shillings to buy
decent clothes may alter a person's destiny. With the shillings--about as
many as the man of God pays for his sirloin--shelter from the weather and
temptations to evil, three meals a day, a long pleasant life, husband and
children, perhaps, and at last--Heaven. And without them, rags and
starvation and the streets, and--well, this is a question for the mighty
intellect of a man and a theologian, not for mine. I dare say you don't
know what I'm talking about, Fan?"

"Not all, ma'am, but I think I understand a little."

"Very little, I should think. Don't try to understand too much, my poor
girl. Perhaps before you are eighty, if you live so long, you will
discover that you didn't even understand a little. Ah, Fan, you have been