"If you please, I would rather not," she said meekly, all the pertness taken out of her now.
She stood still at the bottom of the steps, and looked imploringly at the woman she had deemed her benefactor. For answer, Mrs. Stanley dropped her work, seized Lizzie by the arm, and, before she was aware of it, had ducked her head into the pail of warm dye. She let her raise it for a minute or two that the air might dry it a little, and then dipped it again. This process she repeated two or three times, then thrust her arms in, and held her over it while she bathed her neck.
When she had finished she said, "There! Now you'll do. Your own mother wouldn't know you by the time your hair is cut."
And saying this, she returned to her work, leaving Lizzie to do as she pleased now.
[CHAPTER V.]
THE WAX-WORK SHOW.
WHEN the cavalcade was ready to move on again, Lizzie found she was not to occupy the parlour caravan where she had been all day, but was to sleep in another van, on some sacks of straw that were stowed in odd nooks between the wooden horses and swans of the steam roundabout.
In fact, it seemed that the whole company stowed themselves away for the night among the various portions of the show and shooting gallery that were packed in the wagons. Two or three other girls about her own age shared the strange bed-room with Lizzie, one of whom had a bad cough, and kept the rest awake a good deal.
Foolish Lizzie was too miserable to sleep. Her rough bed was not like the comfortable one she had hitherto had, neither was she used to sleep in her clothes as it seemed was the custom among her new friends. Then her companions were rough, and jeered at her when they found she was crying, so that altogether she really had very much to pity herself over now.
But the rudest shock came when all was quiet, and when apparently the rest were asleep. Lizzie was lying near the door of the van, and it seemed as though one or two persons were smoking outside, from the smell that came through the cracks of the door. They were moving at a slow pace over a tolerably smooth road, so that there was not much jolting, and Lizzie could hear pretty distinctly what was said by those sitting outside.