conception of housekeeping, and that there
were two babies to be fed, they were, of course, villainously poor, and
Em'leen was always draggle-tailed and badly shod. One side of her
too-short dress seemed ever to hang lower than the other, her stockings
always had one hole at least, and her hat--such queer hats--would seem
about to fly away. I have known her type in the upper classes pass
muster as "eccentric" or "full of character." And even in Em'leen there
was a sort of smothered natural comeliness, trying pathetically to push
through, and never getting a chance. She always had a lost-dog air, and
when her big hare's eyes clung on your face, it seemed as if she only
wanted a sign to make her come trailing at your heels, looking up for a
pat or a bit of biscuit.

"She went to work, of course, the moment she left school. Her first
place was in a small farm where they took lodgers, and her duties were
to do everything, without, of course, knowing how to do anything. She
had to leave because she used to take soap and hairpins, and food that
was left over, and was once seen licking a dish. It was just about then
that I attended her mother for those veins in her unwieldy legs, and the
child was at home, waiting to secure some other fate. It was impossible
not to look at that little creature kindly, and to speak to her now and
then; she would not exactly light up, because her face was not made that
way, but she would hang towards you as if you were a magnet, and you had
at once the uncomfortable sensation that you might find her clinging,
impossible to shake off. If one passed her in the village, too, or
coming down from her blackberrying in the thickets on the Downs--their
cottage lay just below the South Downs--one knew that she would be
lingering along, looking back till you were out of sight. Somehow one
hardly thought of her as a girl at all, she seemed so far from all human
hearts, so wandering in a queer lost world of her own, and to imagine
what she could be thinking was as impossible as it is with animals. Once
I passed her and her mother dawdling slowly in a lane, then heard the
dot-and-go-one footsteps pattering after me, and the childish voice,
rather soft and timid, say behind my shoulder: "Would you please buy
some blackberries, sir?" She was almost pretty at that moment, flushed
and breathless at having actually spoken to me, but her eyes hanging on
my face brought a sort of nightmare feeling at once of being u