"If I win the Scholarship I need not do that," said Florence. "No, no, dear, that's just it; and she says also that when she removes you from Cherry Court School she will allow me fifteen pounds a year more than I have at present, which will make my income of sixty-five pounds instead of fifty. I mean to give you that fifteen pounds a year to buy your clothes with, Florry. You shall have that, my poor dear child, whatever happens. I think you can dress yourself quite neatly on that." "I should judge from the sort of clothes I have now," said Florence, giving her foot a pettish kick against the obnoxious blue serge, "I should judge they did not cost five pounds a year. Yes, the fifteen pounds would be delicious; and you would give it to me, Mummy?" "Well, of course, darling, because you would have no income of your own at Stoneley Hall for the first two years, and after that it depends altogether on what you can do. You are not half educated yet, are you Florence?" "Of course not, mother; a girl of fifteen is not educated, as a rule." "That's just it, but your Aunt Susan does not care a bit. She reminds me in her horrid letter, that you are not her own niece at all, and that very few women would be as kind to her husband's people as she is to you and me. She says frankly----" "Oh, what an odious frank way she has!" interrupted Florence. "She says frankly," pursued Mrs. Aylmer, wiping the moisture from her brow as she spoke, "that we are the greatest worry to her, both of us, and that she does not care a pin for either of us, but that she does not want to have it said that her husband's people are in the workhouse, and that is why she is doing what she is doing." "Oh, Mummy," said Florence, "can you bear her? When you tell me those sort of things I just long to throw her gifts in her face and to say boldly, 'We won't take another halfpenny from you, we will go to the workhouse to spite you, we'll tell every one we can that we are connected with you. Yes, we'll go to the workhouse to spite you.'"