She was very beautiful, with silken white hair, shimmered over with a golden luster. A little garden flower, thrown out by chance upon the common wayside, yet blossoming in her own sweet beauty, in contrast with every thing around her.
She was a real princess born, and her coarse, ragged clothes could make no difference.
The work was finished, and, though it was raining still, the mother put on her worn bonnet to take it home.
“If the sun would only shine again,” she sighed heavily, looking down into the dismal back alley; “but I must go.”
She kissed the child, saying, “Be good, darling—mamma will not be gone long.”
“I will be good, mamma,” she answered, “and Dolladine and I will catch the sunshine for you.”
“You are my only sunshine now,” said the mother, hastening away to conceal the tears that would not stay in their hiding-place.
Then the little one was left alone in the attic-room, and began, as she often did, to talk to her doll.
“Now, Dolladine,” she said, “mamma is very sad, and sick, I fear, and you and I must make sunshine for her; but how shall we do it? that is the question.
“Don’t you remember, Dolladine, one day the pretty lady said my hair was beaming sunshine? We must shake it out for poor mamma—we must shake it out;” and the little girl began jumping around the room, shaking her curls, and singing:—