"Oh! see that little girl; what a nice face she has. But she looks so pale and sorry. I wish I had some pennies for her; but I will give her some of my sugar-plums. Perhaps she don't have many."
Poor child! she looked as if she had not many loaves of bread, as she ran by the side of the omnibus, holding up her thin hand. A pale, sorrowful little face it was that looked up into those, so rosy and happy, above it; pinched, careworn, and old above its years, with that look so often seen in the faces of the children of the poor. Yet, in spite of her extreme poverty, she was not very ragged or very dirty; and as little Bessie had said, she had "a nice face," an open, straightforward look, a gentle expression, and a clear, honest eye.
As she saw Bessie's hand outstretched, her face brightened, and as the little girl dropped two or three sugar-plums, she stooped hastily to pick them up; but when she raised her head again, the old weary look had come back, deepened now by disappointment.
Just then the driver whipped up his horses and the omnibus rolled on faster, leaving the child looking sadly after it, and making no attempt to pick up the sugar-plums now thrown out freely by all the little girls.
"Why! she looks as if she didn't like sugar-plums," said Belle.
"Impossible!" said Maggie. "There never could be a person so wanting in sense as not to like sugar-plums."
"Maybe that man who lived in a tub did not," said Lily. "Maggie, I was very much interested in that man when you wrote to me about him, and I meant to ask you a little more about him, but I did not think he could be a wise man. What was his name?"
"Mr. Diogenes," said Maggie; "and the reason they called the old cross-patch a wise man was because wise men were very scarce in those days. They only had seven in all that country; but when you are as far as I am in Parley's History you will learn all about them."
"I wonder what did make that little girl look so sorry," said Bessie, unable to forget the look of disappointment so plainly visible on the child's face.