blown roses of the other girls, though the back of her slender neck was
stained a faint golden brown as by the inherited memories of sun. She
was most immodestly "different," and even the Vicar's lady, who had
charitably seen to her baptism, had difficulty in bringing herself to
believe the girl could be a Christian.

Cherry and Primrose stared up at her as she stood with the red jar in
her hand, and, seeing her look so black, so white, so thin, they leant
their yellow heads together and drew their two aprons closely over their
plump laps.

Seen thus, fronted by Loveday, they seemed amazingly alike, because of
the completeness of her differing, yet a longer look showed that, in
spite of their sleek, fair heads and rounded shoulders, there was
between them the deepest division there can be between women.

Cherry was a maid, thoughtless, blowsy, still untouched enough for
wonder; Primrose had been a wife, though only seventeen, these three
months; in another three was to be a mother. Her eyes, blue as her
friend's, showed an even greater assurance, because it was based on
positives and not on a mere negation. Dark-circled as those eyes were,
her glance, as it passed over Loveday, was the more merciless, because
it came from behind the shelter of a ring-fence.



CHAPTER II: IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S
DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS
A WOMAN