She was decidedly pretty, short but well-shaped, with a small English slightly-upturned nose; small mouth with ripe red lips, which were never still except when she held them pressed with her sharp white teeth to make them look redder and riper than ever. Her brown fluffy hair was worn 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.