CHAPTER XIII.
MATTIE'S MICROCOSM.
Although Mrs. Boxall, senior, was still far from well, yet when the morning of Mrs. Morgenstern's gathering dawned, lovely even in the midst of London, and the first sun-rays, with green tinges and rosy odors hanging about their golden edges, stole into her room, reminding her of the old paddock and the feeding cows at Bucks Horton, in Buckingham, she resolved that Lucy should go to Mrs. Morgenstern's. So the good old lady set herself to feel better, in order that she might be better, and by the time Lucy, who had slept in the same room with her grandmother since her illness, awoke, she was prepared to persuade her that she was quite well enough to let her have a holiday.
"But how am I to leave you, grannie, all alone?" objected Lucy.
"Oh! I dare say that queer little Mattie of yours will come in and keep me company. Make haste and get your clothes on, and go and see."
Now Lucy had had hopes of inducing Mattie to go with her; as I indicated in a previous chapter; but she could not press the child after the reason she gave for not going. And now she might as well ask her to stay with her grandmother. So she went round the corner to Mr. Kitely's shop, glancing up at Mr. Spelt's nest in the wall as she passed, to see whether she was not there.
When she entered the wilderness of books she saw no one; but peeping round one of the many screens, she spied Mattie sitting with her back toward her and her head bent downward. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that she had a large folding plate of the funeral of Lord Nelson open before her, the black shapes of which, with their infernal horror of plumes—the hateful flowers that the buried seeds of ancient paganism still shoot up into the pleasant Christian fields—she was studying with an unaccountable absorption of interest.
"What have you got there Mattie?" asked Lucy.