“Give me something for my doll, miss!” she begged.
“Aw, that’s too tame,” one of the girls called out, and pitched her voice to the true beggar’s whine: “Spare a copper! My only child, dear kind lady, and its only father broke his tender neck in a blasting accident, and left me twelve to maintain!”
All the girls began laughing again. Honoria did not laugh. She was feeling in her pocket.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Lizzie Pezzack. My father tends the lighthouse. Give me something for my doll, miss!”
Honoria held out a half-crown piece.
“Hand it to me.”
The child did not understand. “Give me something—” she began again in her dull, level voice.
Honoria stamped her foot. “Give it to me!” She snatched up the doll and thrust it into the fishing creel, tossed the coin into Lizzie’s basket, and taking Comedy by the bridle, moved up the path.
“She’ve adopted en!” They laughed and called out to Lizzie that she was in luck’s way. But Taffy saw the child’s face as she stared into the empty basket, and that it was perplexed and forlorn.