CHAPTER III.
And now began a third stage of my existence, and a fresh variety of life.
I at first feared that I should have great difficulty in reconciling myself to the change; and my reflections in Sarah's dark pocket were of the most gloomy cast. I dreaded poverty and neglect. How should I, accustomed to the refinements of polished life and the pleasures of cultivated society, endure to be tossed about with no home of my own, and perhaps no one who really cared for me? I knew that I was not in my first bloom, and it seemed unlikely that a new acquaintance should feel towards me like my old friend Rose, who had so long known my value. Perhaps I might be despised; perhaps allowed to go ragged, perhaps even dirty! My spirits sunk, and had I been human, I should have wept.
But cheerful voices aroused me from this melancholy reverie, and I found myself restored to the pleasant light in the hands of a goodhumored-looking little girl, whose reception of me soon banished my fears. For, although altered since the days of my introduction to the world in the bazaar, so that my beauty was not quite what it had been, I still retained charms enough to make me a valuable acquisition to a child who had not much choice of toys; and my disposition and manners were as amiable and pleasing as ever. My new mistress and I soon loved each other dearly; and in her family I learned that people might be equally happy and contented under very different outward circumstances.
Nothing could well be more unlike my former home than that to which I was now introduced. Susan, my little mistress, was a child of about the same age as Rose when she first bought me; but Susan had no money to spend in toys, and very little time to play with them, though she enjoyed them as much as Rose herself. She gave me a hearty welcome; and though she could offer me no furnished house, with its elegancies and comforts, she assigned me the best place in her power—the corner of a shelf on which she kept her books, slate, needlework, and inkstand. And there I lived, sitting on my trunk, and observing human life from a new point of view. And though my dignity might appear lowered in the eyes of the unthinking, I felt that the respectability of my character was really in no way diminished; for I was able to fulfil the great object of my existence as well as ever, by giving innocent pleasure, and being useful in my humble way.
No other dolls now visited me; but I was not deprived of the enjoyments of inanimate society, for I soon struck up an intimate acquaintance with an excellent Pen in the inkstand by my side, and we passed our leisure hours very pleasantly in communicating to each other our past adventures. His knowledge of life was limited, having resided in that inkstand, and performed all the writing of the family, ever since he was a quill. But his experience was wise and virtuous; and he could bear witness to many an industrious effort at improvement, in which he had been the willing instrument; and to many a hard struggle for honesty and independence, which figures of his writing had recorded. I liked to watch the good Pen at his work when the father of the family spent an hour in the evening in teaching Susan and her brothers to write; or when the careful mother took him in hand to help her in balancing her accounts, and ascertaining that she owed no one a penny, before she ventured upon any new purchase. Then my worthy friend was in his glory; and it was delightful to see how he enjoyed his work. He had but one fault, which was a slight tendency to splutter; and as he was obliged to keep that under restraint while engaged in writing, he made himself amends by a little praise of himself, when relating his exploits to a sympathising friend like myself. On his return with the inkstand to the corner of my shelf, he could not resist sometimes boasting when he had not made a single blot; or confessing to me, in perfect confidence, how much the thinness of Susan's upstrokes, or the thickness of her downstrokes, was owing to the clearness of his slit or the fineness of his nib.
The family of which we made part lived frugally and worked hard: but they were healthy and happy. The father with his boys went out early in the morning to the daily labor by which they maintained the family. The mother remained at home, to take care of the baby and do the work of the house. She was the neatest and most careful person I ever saw, and she brought up her daughter Susan to be as notable as herself.
Susan was an industrious little girl, and in her childish way worked almost as hard as her mother. She helped to sweep the house, and nurse the baby, and mend the clothes, and was as busy as a bee. But she was always tidy; and though her clothes were often old and shabby, I never saw them dirty or ragged. Indeed, I must own that, in point of neatness, Susan was even superior to my old friend Rose. Rose would break her strings, or lose her buttons, or leave holes in her gloves, till reproved by her Mama for untidiness: but Susan never forgot that 'a stitch in time saves nine,' and the stitch was never wanting.
She used to go to school for some hours every day: and I should have liked to go with her, and help her in her studies, especially when I found that she was learning the multiplication-table, and I remembered how useful I had been to Rose in that very lesson; but dolls were not allowed at school, and I was obliged to wait patiently for Susan's company till she had finished all her business, both at school and at home.
She had so little time to bestow upon me, that at first I began to fear that I should be of no use to her. The suspicion was terrible; for the wish to be useful has been the great idea of my life. It was my earliest hope, and it will be my latest pleasure. I could be happy under almost any change of circumstances; but as long as a splinter of me remains, I should never be able to reconcile myself to the degradation of thinking that I had been of no use.