She had consented to go away, to leave her home.  Was that wise?  She tried to weigh each side of the question.  In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her.  O course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business.  What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow?  Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement.  Miss Gavan would be glad.  She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.

“Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?”

“Look lively, Miss Hill, please.”

She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.

But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that.  Then she would be married—­she, Eveline.  People would treat her with respect then.  She would not be treated as her mother had been.  Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father’s violence.  She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations.  When they were growing up he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother’s sake.  And no she had nobody to protect her.  Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country.  Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably.  She always gave her entire wages—­seven shillings—­and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father.  He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn’t going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad on Saturday night.  In the end he would give her the money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday’s dinner.  Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions.  She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to hr charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly.  It was hard work—­a hard life—­but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.

She was about to explore another life with Frank.  Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted.  She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her.  How well she remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit.  It seemed a few weeks ago.  He was standing at