The Little Princess of Tower Hill

by L. T. Meade

"Bless the child!" she said presently. "Well, Miss Maggie dear, where's the secret I'm to keep inviolate?"

"Why, that's it, Waters; the secret is that I don't know nothing—nothing at all."

"Well, you'll learn, dearie," said Waters; "you'll learn all in good time. You're nothing but a young child, and you has lots and lots of years before you."

Maggie did not at all consider herself very young. There were one or two babies in the village at home, just beginning to toddle, who were really juvenile; but she, Maggie Ascot, who could run and jump and skip, and even ride!—it was really rather silly to speak of her as a very young child. However, now she was so soothed by "Waters' gentle words and Waters' petting that she could find no fault with any remark made to her by that worthy person. On the contrary, she cuddled up to her and stroked her cheek, and felt relieved at the unburdening of her secret.

"I didn't learn to read till I was a good bit older than you," said Waters. "I don't mean that I'm an example for any dear little lady to follow, for I never could abide a bookworm. I don't take to it now. I only learned because my mother said it was a shame to have a great big girl who could neither spell nor write. My tastes always lay in the needlework line. Since I was a little tot I was forever with a bit of sewing in my hand; I'd hem, and I'd back-stitch, and I'd top-sew whenever I had the chance. Why, I mind me of the time when I unpicked one of my father's old shirts just for the pleasure of putting it together again, and didn't mother laugh when she saw what I was after! Plain needlework was my line, Miss Maggie, and maybe it's yours too, dearie."

"Oh, no, it isn't!" said Maggie, opening her blue eyes with quite a gleam of horror in them. "I hate plain sewing worser even than I do reading; I hate it even worser than my figures. Plain sewing pricks, and it worries me. I hate it more than anything."

"Well, well, dearie, you're in the pricking stages yet; I went through that, same as another. You'll come to learn the comfort of it, for of all the soothers for poor worrited women, there's nothing at all in my opinion like needle and thread."

Maggie was beginning to find this turn in the conversation rather unintelligible, so she brought Waters back to the subject which most interested her by asking if she had also found the study of figures very good for the worries, and if she would let her know how many pennies Susy must have to make up the half-crown.

"Oh, is that little Susy Aylmer?" said Waters. "I don't approve of no child going out to sing in the streets. However, it isn't for me to interfere, and Mrs. Aylmer is as honest and hard-working a body as ever walked, and that little Jo is a real angel, and as the poor things must live somehow, why, I suppose Susy had better sing. Master Ralph is saving up his pennies, and he'll give them all to her as sure as sure, so you has no call to put yourself out about it, Miss Maggie."

"Yes, but I don't want her to wait," said Maggie. "She has nothing to eat, and she'll be so dreadfully, dreadfully hungry. She has got fourteen pennies, and she can't get anything to eat until she has thirty. Oh, Waters! if you do know figures, please tell me how many days poor Susy must live without any food until she has got the thirty pennies."