Her last application, however, should have been her first, for it was to a young girl about Lotte’s own age and figure. She was an artificial florist, a worker, too, of eighteen hours out of the twenty-four--a diligent, unmurmuring, white slave. She was able to sympathise with poor Lotte, and she generously offered to lend her all the clothes she would require, until she obtained work, and would be able to return them. With delight Mrs. Bantom accepted her offer, and conveyed the clothes to Lotte. With yet greater delight did the poor girl attire herself in them, and hurry to the house for which she had worked before the fire had rendered her homeless. She revealed her unhappy position to the individual who had employed her (there are few like him, thank Heaven!) He listened coldly to her statement, and finding that six dozen cap fronts, his property, had been consumed in the fire, instead of commiserating her, abruptly informed her that she must pay for the blonde and flowers before she had any more work, and if in two days she did not bring to him the amount, he would pay her a visit accompanied by a policeman. Sickened and affrighted, Lotte hurried from the house, her hopes once more dashed to the ground, her heart bursting with agony, no one to go to for counsel or assistance. What was to be done? Almost frantic, she wandered about without an aim, feeling that she could not go back to the kind people who had sheltered her, unless she had some prospect of lifting herself out of her desolate destitution, and recompensing them, at least, for her board, although she could never repay the service and the attention they had rendered to her. She wandered through the streets, growing weak and faint from an exertion to which she was not equal, and from being many hours without food, gradually becoming desperate, as hopeless. She thought of the coming night and the dark waters that swept silently beneath the frowning arches of the bridges which spanned their breadth, and an ever-recurring thought kept ringing in her ears-- “Anywhere, anywhere-- Out of the world,” suddenly her eyes fell upon a printed bill; it said: “One thousand cap-front hands wanted!” Not a second elapsed between her discovery of that bill and the resting of her trembling hand upon the knocker of the door. Her timid summons was responded to, and her application for work met with success. She was requested to enter a room and to sit down, and “make a pattern.” She was furnished with materials, and it was not long before she produced a “front,” which gave great satisfaction to the employer. The answers to inquiries put to her being deemed satisfactory, materials for twelve dozen fronts were given to her, in a box, which she was to return with her work.