"Well," said Granny, "I don't know, and I don't know as even Mr Edgar knows. But there, the fact's against them, and 'twas a terrible ending to a foolish trick." "Ravenshurst is full again this summer," said Mrs Warren. "Sir Philip and Lady Carleton are coming down, and if Florrie were a sensible girl I might get her a temporary place under the housekeeper there; but it do go against me to have anything to do with that house." "Well, I'd not send her _there_," said Granny; "she's a deal too bouncing now for any lady's house." Mrs Warren saw no occasion for some time to change this verdict. Florence "bounced" more as she became more at her ease. She did not mean to misbehave herself, but her notions of behaviour were so very unlike Mrs Warren's. The kindest thing that could be said of her was that she meant well, but unfortunately she did very badly. Moreover, she did not appear to have a single aspiration after better things. She had lived the life of a little animal, bent on nothing but on pleasing herself; but as she was not a mere animal, but a human soul, with human powers for good or evil, evil was getting terribly the upper hand. It was not so much what Florence did as what she was that was the pity. Girls are refined and softened, sometimes by intellectual tastes and a mental power of choosing the better part, and more often, in Florence's rank of life, by the many self-denials, the care of little ones, the constant unselfishness born of the hard struggle of life in the working class. Florence had no intellectual tastes, and had never known any struggle. She had been ignorant and comfortable all her life, and her mind was full of silly common thoughts and fancies, and thoughts and fancies worse than merely silly. She was vain and selfish, saucy and curious. She did not love anyone very much; she had no wants or wishes except to please herself. She was so much bolder than other girls that she attracted more notice, but she was not at all exceptional, unhappily. As for religion, what religion can a creature have who never felt a superior and never knew a need? And religion had not come much before Florence except in the form of respectable observance. Mrs Warren, who in a still and quiet way was a religious woman, wondered how to teach her better, before, as she put it to herself, "the poor thing was taught by trouble."