Back on Martha's mind came an evening long ago, and the sound of a sharp, aggravating, provoking whistle, a boy's face, too like Florrie's, peeping in first at the door and then at the window, and a voice repeating, "Don't care--don't care--don't care!" in more and more saucy accents, as the speaker ran off across the forbidden turf of the cemetery, jumping over the graves as he came to them. That night had brought the explosion of mischief which had resulted in Harry's departure from home and in his final banishment. Where was that saucy lad now? And had he learnt to care out in the wide world by himself? But Florence was a girl and if _she_ said "Don't care" once too often her father could not say to her, "Obey me, or you shall do for yourself in future." And she had no sense of responsibility sufficient to give her a good reason for conquering herself. She had a child's confidence in the care she was childishly defying. People so proud and so respectable as the Whittakers could not even send their girl to a rough place where she would "learn the difference" between Mrs Lee's "fancy shop" and general service. Poor Martha felt that to have Florence at home, doing nothing but give trouble, would be nearly intolerable; while what she would do if Mrs Stroud's suggestion was adopted, and she was sent to stay with her, passed the wildest imagination to conceive. "You'll be very sorry, Florrie," she said, "when it's too late." "No, I shan't," said Florence; "I like a change. I'm tired of serving in the shop. Dear me! there's a many situations in the world. I'll get a new one some time." Florence got her way, and though she was supposed to be in disgrace, she declined to recognise the fact. She fell back into the position of an idle child at home, worried Matty, set her little sisters a very poor example, and enjoyed as much half-stolen, half-defiant freedom as she could. When she found that Carrie and Ada had been forbidden by their respective mothers to "go with her," as they expressed it, she made it her delight to tease and trap them into enduring her company, and finally, after about a fortnight, walked coolly down to see Mrs Lee and ask how she got on with the new assistant! CHAPTER FOUR. ASHCROFT. Some twenty miles away from Rapley, in a less flat and dull and more richly wooded landscape, was the little village of Ashcroft, where Mr Whittaker's cousin, Charles Warren, was head keeper to Mr Cunningham, of Ashcroft Hall.