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 depressing it for as long as ten minutes at a time. She was on the way to develop a cleft between her eyebrows from her frequent anxious frowns. Most children would have taken a fortnight's security as a guarantee that her secret would remain for ever undiscovered; but Pollyooly had too active an imagination; and the dreadful fear of finding herself and the Lump adrift on the world was always with her.

In the meantime she was doing everything in her power to provide against the evil day of discovery, but her power was not great. The rent of their attic was three shillings a week, the Lump's milk cost another shilling and twopence, since her aunt had held a pint of milk a day to be a necessity for a child of two; and Pollyooly adhered firmly to the practice. The stale bread, the bacon-fat, which the Honorable John Ruffin spurned, and Mr. Gedge-Tomkins got no chance of spurning, and an occasional uneaten egg, made the chief part of their food; and there was sometimes a red-letter day when too many brandies and sodas on the top of too much champagne made even his beloved bacon abhorrent to the Honorable John Ruffin, and Pollyooly