CHAPTER XI.
How long 'Lisbeth might have sat under the shelf, and under the curtain, earning pence and pulling wires, and forgetting that her mother was looking for her, had she not fallen into a doze, I cannot say. She might have been there till now; she might have been there ten years to come; but she did doze and she did wake up; she had swept the crossing hard enough the day before to be tired, and she was; she was tired, and it was coming night, and she did doze, and she did wake up, and she did wake up with a start which broke the wire, and twisted the head of the wax figure clear out of place, so that it looked in the shop instead of out of it, and made a confusion inside, and outside, and on all sides, seldom made by any wax figure in any wig since the beginning of time.
'Lisbeth told the pleasant little man that she could not help it, and he told her that he could not help it, and 'Lisbeth went home—to be sure seven pence richer, but a good deal flustered and disappointed, and with the determination never again, while she lived and breathed, to have anything to do with, or even so much as to look at any wax figures or any wigs.
'Lisbeth's mother told her that had she waited, and asked her advice, instead of leaving her to such distress in looking for her, she would have told her, in the beginning, to have nothing to do in the matter of wigs, with which she was not acquainted, and reproved her for staying away till the candle was lighted on the shelf; and 'Lisbeth, if she was no more unhappy than she had been when she stood by the mile-stone, was certainly no more happy.
To be sure she was richer. Though she had broken the wire, the pleasant little man had given her seven pence, though she had gained nothing more; but the bother, now, was to know what to do with it. Had it been seven thousand pence she might, perhaps, have known better what to do with it; but seven pence were of so much more consequence; being a little it had to go a great way. There was no trifling to be done about it. She knew the importance of it. She was awake half the night considering how to spend it, and the other half she was dreaming of losing and finding it, until by morning her head was almost split in two.
Had 'Lisbeth run home and given the seven pence to her mother to buy a nice platted loaf or a piece of bacon, her head had not almost split in two; but 'Lisbeth was always making trouble for herself. Though the thoughts and worry about the pence almost split her head, she was not in a condition in the morning to know what to do with the pence. She had her own pence and her own plan, had she had less of her own she would have been more comfortable. But 'Lisbeth was 'Lisbeth, and if her mother sighed about it, she could not see any way of making her anybody else.
When breakfast was over that morning the mother went to carry some sewing home, and while she was gone 'Lisbeth thought she would go out too. This was very wrong; very wrong indeed, but 'Lisbeth did not wait to think about that. She took a basket when she went out, and she took her seven pence. She felt herself very important indeed, though really she was nobody but a disobedient little girl. She came to a cake shop where all kinds of cakes were to be bought.
"I'm going to keep store," said 'Lisbeth to the shopman, "and I want some wonderful nice cakes."
"You do, do you?" said the shopman; "let me see your money."