"I was always the one to lead the rest," said Florence, "and I've always liked a bit of fun. But I had to go and try to step them from taking Harry up for a poacher, and--and he says it ain't no manner of use to say `Don't care,' and I'm very sorry." "If you were able to stop the harm you had begun to do, that is a thing to be very thankful for--to thank God for!" said Lady Carleton with some emotion in her tone. Florence looked up with a certain solemnity in her round eyes never seen there before. "I did say my prayers in the wood," she said, "when I lost my way, and then Harry came." "Tell me about it," said Lady Carleton kindly. Thus encouraged, Florence volubly, according to her nature, but with a friendliness of manner which was really the nearest approach to respect that she had ever exhibited, told her tale. "And my heart was in my mouth, ma'am, the trees were that black and that awful. I'd have run back, for I wouldn't have cared if nurse had given me ever so much of the rough side of her tongue. But there, I couldn't have it on my mind that I'd set the keepers on my brother and dear Miss Geraldine's too. But I didn't know one path from another no more than if there hadn't been none. And then I thought of little Miss Lily's prayer about setting wrongs right and travellers, and I said it, Lady Carleton; and there was Harry." "Did you, Florence? Oh, thank God for it!" said Lady Carleton tearfully. "And he took me right back, and he said this morning that the best thing I could do was to come back here and be trained a bit. And so I've come, please, ma'am--my lady. Please, aunt said I was to say `my lady,' and I will, but I forgot; and I'll be a good girl, and not gossip on the sly, nor answer nurse back, nor make the other girls saucy. And I'll trim up my hat quiet, if you like, my lady. I--I want to be good." Florence cried as she finished speaking, and wiped her eyes and blew her nose noisily. Perhaps, but for the circumstances that appealed so strongly to her sympathy, Lady Carleton would never have recognised how real this confused desire "to be good" was in this extraordinary girl, so unlike any well-trained maiden whom she had ever encountered. "Well," she said, "you shall try. You had better talk as little about the matter as possible, and I trust you never will `gossip on the sly,' or do anything of the kind, for I couldn't have a girl who was not nice and modest near my little ones. I will speak to nurse." "Thank you--my lady." But as Lady Carleton rose to take her back to the nursery, Florence's round face suddenly beamed all over, and she said sympathetically: "They've found out who stole the jewels, my lady, and it was not Harry nor Mr Alwyn. They were as innocent as lambs."