But for the whole week before Pollyooly's trip to Devon Millicent had not been to the class. Pollyooly enquired and Madame Correlli enquired the reason for her absence, but none of the other pupils could tell them. It was now ten days since Pollyooly had seen her, and she was feeling anxious indeed about her. Then, after the class was over, as she was leading the Lump down St. Martin's Lane on their way to the embankment he projected an arm and broke his placid and perpetual silence with one of his rare, but pregnant grunts. Pollyooly looked where he pointed, saw Millicent on the island in the middle of the roadway, and called to her. Millicent turned her head and looked at them with somewhat dazed eyes. Her face did not as usual light up at the sight of the Lump. She crossed the road to them feebly. "How are you? Why haven't you come to the classes for so long?" said Pollyooly. "Mother's dead," said Millicent dully; and her big eyes which had been so dull, shone suddenly bright with tears. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" said Pollyooly pitifully; and as she gazed anxiously at Millicent's seared and miserable face, her eyes grew moist with tears of sympathy. Millicent stooped and kissed the Lump listlessly, almost mechanically. "And what are you going to do?" said Pollyooly with grave anxiety. She understood fully the seriousness of Millicent's plight. "I'm going to the workhouse," said Millicent dully. Pollyooly clutched her arm. It was impossible for her to turn pale for she was always of a clear, camelia-like pallor; but that pallor grew a little dead as she cried in a tone of horror: "Oh, no! You can't go to the workhouse! You mustn't!" Millicent looked at her with the lack-lustre eyes of the vanquished, and said in the same dull, toneless voice: "I've got to. There's nowhere else for me to go to." The tears in Pollyooly's eyes brimmed over in her dismay and horror at this dreadful fate of her friend; and she, the dauntless, Spartan heroine of a hundred fights with the small boys of Alsatia, was fairly crying. "You mustn't go! You mustn't!" she cried. "I didn't want to. I was trying not to," said Millicent slowly. "After mother's funeral yesterday Mrs. Baker, that's our landlady, said the relieving officer was coming round this morning to take me to the workhouse; and I ran away." "Yes: that was the right thing to do," said Pollyooly in firm approval. "Yes: I got up very early--just when it was light," said Millicent; and her voice grew a little firmer. "And I packed my clothes"--she gave the little bundle she was carrying a shake--"and then I sneaked down-stairs and out of the house. And oh, the trouble the front door gave me! You wouldn't believe! First it wouldn't open; and then when it did, it made noise enough to wake the whole house." Pollyooly nodded with an air of ripe experience.