Miss Hobbs luckily had gone home; but Kate Woodley made things worse by being very sorry and clicking away like a Bee clock, and Clara hardly knew how to get through the rest of the day.
Clara’s bedtime came always at a quarter to eight, and between her supper, which was at half-past six, and that hour she used to come downstairs and play with her father and mother. On this evening she was very quiet and miserable, although Mrs. Platts and Mr. Platts did all they could to cheer her; and she even committed one of the most extraordinary actions of her life, for she said, when it was still only half-past seven, that she should like to go to bed.
And she would have gone had not at that very moment a tremendous knock sounded at the front door—so tremendous that, in spite of her unhappiness, Clara had, of course, to wait and see what it was.
And what do you think it was? It was a box addressed to Mrs. Platts, and it came from Biter’s, the very shop where the tragedy had occurred.
“But I haven’t ordered anything,” said Mrs. Platts.
“Never mind,” said Mr. Platts, who had a practical mind. “Open it.”
So the box was opened, and inside was a note, and this is what it said:
“Dear Madam,
“I am so distressed to think that I am the cause of your little girl losing her present, that I feel there is nothing I can do but give her one myself. For if I had not been so foolish—at my age too!—as to go to Biter’s this afternoon, without any real purpose but to look round, she would never have got into trouble. Biter’s is for children, not for old men with queer faces. And so I beg leave to send her this doll, which I hope is the right one, and with it a few clothes and necessaries, and I am sure that she will not forget how it was that she very nearly lost it altogether.
“Believe me, yours penitently,