As for the granddaughter herself, I think she was the most utterly dejected, forlorn, of-no-account-looking girl I have ever set eyes on. She told me she was twenty (though her intelligence seemed about fourteen), and her name was Eileen. It was noticeable, however, that her grandmother, in the fit of reminiscent absent-mindedness occasioned by the snowdrops, called her Ann. It wasn’t that she looked ill; hers was an expression of hopelessness; the look that comes to a young thing from a course of systematic unkindness from which it has neither the wit nor the courage to escape. Since she had left the Parish Schools, she had apparently drifted from one place to another, each worse than the last. Fortunately her grandmother had kept a firm hold of her, and had done her best to keep her clean—both in body and mind; but her whole appearance said as plainly as any words, that no one else had ever taken the slightest personal interest in her, or given her anything to hope for. Her hair was screwed round in a small tight knot in the nape of her neck, and kept there by two huge hairpins the size of small meat skewers; her dress was merely a dingy-black shapeless covering, not even a fancy button to brighten it; her hat was a plain all-black sailor. She had that blank, dazed look that one so often sees when lower-class children are brought up in masses, where individual attention is impossible. I told them that I was going down to the West of England the following week, and if she thought she could stand the quiet, and the absence of shops and people, Eileen could come for a month, and just breathe the fresh air and do her best to get strong. She was genuinely delighted—there was no mistake about that. She seemed quite to wake up, and became almost animated at the thought of going into the country. _That_ was the thing that appealed to her; and she looked at me with open-eyed amazement when I told her that the snowdrops grew wild in the orchard there. In the orchard? And might she pick a few for herself and send one or two to her grandmother? Wouldn’t “they” mind if anyone picked some? She had never seen a violet or a primrose growing wild in her life, though she had always wanted to. And she and her grandmother looked and smiled at each other with some new bond of sympathy. Heredity will out! “But,” said the grandmother firmly, almost ashamed of her own sentimental lapse of the minute before, “of course she will work, ma’am, and work well—or she’s no granddaughter of mine!—in return for your great kindness in having her. She can’t pay you in money, but she can work, and I hope you’ll find her very useful. You’ll do your best for the lady, won’t you, Ann?”—most severely to the girl. “Yes, grandmother,” she replied, dropping back into an attitude of meek dejection. “Of course I’ll do my _very_ best.”