“Yes,” said Miss Anne, “I do not doubt it. Every lady has a great many beautiful things, put away, which she does not want to use herself, but she only wants to have them kept safely. Now, I should take such good care of all such things, that my mother would be very glad to have me keep them.”
“Did you do so, when you were a little girl?” said Lucy.
“No,” said Miss Anne; “I was just as careless and foolish as you are. When I was playing with anything, and was suddenly called away, I would throw it right down, wherever I happened to be, and leave it there. Once I had a little glass dog, and I left it on the floor, where I had been playing with it, and somebody came along, and stepped upon it, and broke it to pieces.”
“And would not your mother give you things then?” asked Lucy.
“No, nothing which was of much value.—And once my uncle sent me a beautiful little doll; but my mother would not let me keep it. She kept it herself, locked up in a drawer, only sometimes she would let me have it to play with.”
“Why would not she let you keep it?” said Lucy.
“O, if she had, I should soon have made it look like old Margaret.”
Here Royal said he had got his Indian pasted; and he put away the gum arabic bottle, and the sheet of paper, and then he and Lucy went away.