She wore a plain, tight-fitting grey gown, a small straw hat of the brimless kind, and a white linen collar about her neck.

Totty was nineteen; no girl in Lambeth relished life with so much determination, yet to all appearance so harmlessly.
Her independence was complete; for five years she had been parentless and had lived alone.
Thyrza was attracted to her by this air of freedom and joyousness which distinguished Totty.

It was a character wholly unlike her own, and her imaginative thought discerned in it something of an ideal; her own timidity and her tendency to languor found a refreshing antidote in the other's breezy carelessness.

Impurity of mind would have repelled her, and there was no trace of it in Totty.

Yet Lydia took very ill this recently-grown companionship, holding her friend Mary Bower's view of the girl's character.