THE OPPORTUNITY One or two days after this, Ida Starr came home from work with a heavy heart.

Quite without notice, and without explanation, her employer had paid her a week's wages and dismissed her.

Her first astonished questions having been met with silence by the honest but hard-grained woman who kept the laundry, Ida had not condescended to any further appeal.

The fact was that the laundress had received a visit from a certain Mrs.Sprowl, who, under pretence of making inquiries for the protection of a young female friend, revealed the damaging points of Ida's story, and gained the end plotted with Harriet Casti.
Several circumstances united to make this event disastrous to Ida.

Her wages were very little more than she needed for her week to week existence, yet she had managed to save a shilling or two now and then.
The greater part of these small savings she had just laid out in some new clothing, the reason for the expense being not so much necessity, as a desire to be rather better dressed when she accompanied Waymark on those little country excursions which had reestablished themselves of late.