Fan was silent, not knowing what was meant.

Then Miss Starbrow went out, but first she called the maid and told her
to remove Fan's bed and toilet requisites out of her room into the back
room.

Greatly distressed and perplexed at the unkind way she had been spoken
to, Fan changed her dress and sat down in the cold back room to do some
work. After a while she heard a great noise as of furniture being dragged
about, and presently Rosie came in with the separate pieces of her
dismantled bed.

"What are you doing with my things?" exclaimed Fan in surprise.

"Your things!" retorted Rosie, with scorn. "What your mistress told me to
do, you cheeky little beggar! Your things indeed! 'Put a beggar on
horseback and he'll ride to the devil,' and that's what Miss Starbrow's
beginning to find out at last. And quite time, too! Embroidery! That's
what you're going to wear perhaps when you're back in the slums you came
from! I thought it wouldn't last!" And Rosie, banging the things about,
pounding the mattress with clenched fist, and shaking the pillows like a
terrier with a rat, kept up this strain of invective until she had
finished her task, and then went off, well pleased to think that the day
of her triumph was not perhaps very far distant.

On that day, however, Rosie herself was destined to experience great
trouble of mind, and an anxiety about her future even exceeding that of
Fan, who was spending the long hours alone in that big, cold, fireless
room, grieving in her heart at the great change in her beloved mistress,
and dropping many a tear on the embroidery in her hands.