CHAPTER IX.
POLLY'S DEFIANCE Content with her four lodgers, Mrs.Bubb reserved the rooms on the ground floor for her own use.

In that at the back she slept with the two younger children; the other two had a little bed in the front room, which during the daytime served as a parlour.

On occasions of ceremony--when the parlour was needed in the evening--the children slept in a bare attic next to that occupied by Moggie; and this they looked upon as a treat, for it removed them from their mother's observation, and gave opportunities for all sorts of adventurous pranks.
Thus were things arranged for to-night.

Mrs.Bubb swept and garnished her parlour for the becoming reception of a visitor whom she could not but "look up to." Mrs.Clover's origin was as humble as her own, and her education not much better, but natural gifts and worldly circumstances had set a distance between them.

Partly, perhaps, because she was the widow of a police constable Mrs.Bubb gave all due weight to social distinctions; she knew her "place," and was incapable of presuming.