short like a boy's, and she looked not unlike a handsome high-spirited
boy, with brown eyes, mirthful and daring. She was extremely vivacious in
disposition, and active--too active, in fact, for she got through her
housemaid's work so quickly that it left her many hours of each day in
which to listen to the promptings of the demon of mischief. It was only
because she did her work so rapidly and so well that her mistress kept
her on--"put up with her," as she expressed it--in spite of her faults of
temper and tongue. But Rosie's heart was not in her work. She was
romantic and ambitious, and her shallow little brain was filled with a
thousand dreams of wonderful things to be. She was a constant and
ravenous reader of _Bow Bells_, the _London Journal_, and one
or two penny weeklies besides; and not satisfied with the half-hundred
columns of microscopical letterpress they afforded her, she laid her busy
hands on all the light literature left about by her mistress, and thought
herself hardly treated because Miss Starbrow was a great reader of French
novels. It was exceedingly tantalising to know that those yellow-covered
books were so well suited to her taste, and not be able to read them. For
someone had told her what nice books they were--someone with a big red
moustache, who was as fond of pretty red lips as a greedy school-boy is
of ripe cherries.

Many were the stolen interviews between the daring little housemaid and
her gentleman lover; sometimes in the house itself, in a shaded part of
the hall, or in one of the reception-rooms when a happy opportunity
offered--and opportunities always come to those who watch for them;
sometimes out of doors in the shadow of convenient trees in the
neighbouring quiet street and squares after dark. But Rosie was not too
reckless. There was a considerable amount of cunning in that small brain
of hers, which prevented her from falling over the brink of the precipice
on the perilous edge of which she danced like a playful kid so airily. It