lter of a ring-fence.

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

Chapter II

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

For all her woodland timidity, Loveday was prone to those flashes of
temper to which the weak in defence and the strong in feeling seem
peculiarly exposed. She snatched the shielding apron back from the lap
of the buxom Cherry, stamping her foot the while. Cherry, too amazed to
protect her treasure, stared, slack-mouthed.

Primrose flew into a temper that surpassed Loveday's, already failing
her through dismay at her own action, even as the thunder, to children,
surpasses in terrifying quality the lightning.... And, had they but
known it, Primrose's sounding tantrums held as much possibility of
danger, compared with Loveday's rage, as holds the crash compared with
the flash. But they knew it not, and already Loveday stood panting a
little and spent with her own storm, while Primrose gathered herself,
undaunted, for the attack.

A hail of words would have beaten about Loveday's drooping head had not
Cherry, all unwitting, come to the rescue with a cry on the discovery
that her treasures, thus disturbed, had fallen to the ground, which was
muddy enough, owing to the habit of the cattle of trampling the soil
around the stiles.

"Oh, my fairings, my fairings!" cried Cherry, swooping at them from her
height with all the headlong thump of a gannet after its prey. Loveday's
dive was as the gull's for grace contrasted with it. Their hands met;
Loveday divined in an instant, by the tug of Cherry's, that she was
suspected of trying to snatch the fairings, instead of merely restoring
them, and she straightened herself with a return of her sick anger.
Cherry clutched the frail morsels of riband and lace in her lap, then,
seeing there was no danger, began to straighten them out, scolding the
while.

"There, see, Primrose love, that edging is all crumpled ... did you ever
see the like? Never mind, I'll press it out for 'ee, and it'll look as
good as new. And this riband, that's the one I bought off Bendigo, the
pedlar, for Flora Day--oh, my dear life, what'll I do with it now?"

"'Tis a gurt shame, that's what 'tis," said Primrose, resentful both for
her friend's riband and her own edging; "and I'd get my Willie to make
her buy new, only 'tis no good asking paupers for money, because, even
if they was t