“She didn’t mean it, dear,” said Miss Allen appeasingly; “she’s always said you’re the only pretty girl who’s straight in ‘Dawes’.’”

“Will you answer my question?” asked Mavis, with quiet persistence.  Then, as the girl made no reply, “Please yourself.  I shall raise the whole question to-morrow, and I’ll ask to be moved from this room.  Then perhaps you’ll learn not to class me with common, low girls like yourself.”

It might be thought that Mavis’s aspersions might have provoked a storm:  it produced an altogether contrary effect.

“Don’t be down on me.  I don’t know what’s to become of me,” whimpered Miss Potter.

The next moment, the three girls, other than Mavis, were clinging together, the while they wept tears of contrition and sympathy.

Mavis, although her pride had been cruelly wounded by Miss Potter’s careless but base accusation, was touched at the girl’s distress; the abasement of the once proud young beauty, the nature of its cause, together with the realisation of the poor girl’s desperate case, moved her deeply:  she stood irresolute in the middle of the room.  The three weeping girls were wondering when Mavis was going to recommence her attack; they little knew that her keen imagination was already dwelling with infinite compassion on the dismal conditions in which the promised new life would come into the world.  Her heart went out to the extremity of mother and unborn little one; had not her pride forbade her, she would have comforted Miss Potter with brave words.  Presently, when Miss Potter whimpered something about “some people being so straitlaced,” Mavis found words to say: 

“I’m not a bit straitlaced.  I’m really very sorry for you, and I can’t see you’re much to blame, as the life we lead here is enough to drive girls to anything.  If I’m any different, it’s because I’m not built that way.”

Mavis was the only girl in the room who got next to no sleep.  Long after the other girls had found repose, she lay awake, wide-eyed; her sudden gust of rage had exhausted her; all the same, her body quivered with passion whenever she remembered Miss Potter’s insult.  But it was the shock of the discovery of the girl’s condition which mostly kept her awake; hitherto, she had been dimly conscious that such things were; now that they had been forced upon her attention, she was dazed at their presence in the person of one with whom she was daily associated.  Then she fell to wondering what mysterious ends of Providence Miss Potter’s visitation would serve.  The problem made her head ache.  She took refuge in the thought that Miss Potter was a sparrow, such as she—­a sparrow with gaudier and, at the same time, more bedraggled plumage, but one who, for all this detriment, could not utterly fall without the knowledge of One who cared.  This thought comforted Mavis and brought her what little sleep she got.

The next morning, Mavis was sent to a City warehouse in order to match some material that “Dawes’” had not in stock.  When she took her seat on the ’bus, a familiar voice cried: