"Seven pence," said 'Lisbeth, displaying it on the counter; "I want to spend it all."
"You do, do you? Where's your store?"
"In my basket," said 'Lisbeth, but there was nothing in her basket but a bit of brown paper.
"What would you like to buy with your seven pence?" asked the shopman.
"A great many things," said 'Lisbeth; "but I think I will buy some of these cakes."
"Humph," said the shopman; "pick out nine of 'm."
'Lisbeth picked them out. They were cakes of different shapes; quite a stock for seven pence, and no mistake.
'Lisbeth arranged the cakes along the bottom of the basket in two rows; four in one row and five in the other. Then she started off. She never was more pleased in her life. She was more sure than ever that she was somebody, that she was somebody important. She expected that every one of those cakes would be gone before she had time to look around. She was surprised to find that instead of everybody stopping to look at them, nobody stopped to look at them at all. She was surprised to find everybody going by as though there was a pot of gold, at the other end of the street, which they were hurrying on to get, while they did not so much as glance at her, or at the cakes in her basket. This would never do. She would walk up and ask them to buy. So she walked up and asked them, but they did not hear her, or did not want to hear her, and did not stop walking as fast as they could, except one lady with two little girls who bought two for two pence.
'Lisbeth thought these were nice little girls; she wished afterward she had asked them to buy four for four pence. Nobody else bought any. She walked and walked, and stood; and the mother came home and wondered where she was, and looked out of the window, and out of the door, and listened on the stairs, but could make nothing of it at all; and the fact was, that when the mother was listening on the stairs, and looking out of the doors, and sighing to herself about ever having come to London, 'Lisbeth was sound asleep, at the corner of the street, seated on the sidewalk with her back against the wall, and her basket standing beside her, and the mother might as well have listened for her feet as for the buzzing of a china bumble-bee with glass legs.