"She won't have a chance, and she dursn't not to say beat us—father'd be down on her—but she doesn't think nought of a good shakin'. But I'll push the basket in and run off if she's in a real wax."
"Good-bye, then. You must tell me lots more about the hills. Ask your father all you can," and so saying, Peggy flew home again.
"Where've you been, what did you do with the bun?" asked Baldwin, as soon as she came in to the nursery.
"I runned down with it, and gaved it to a little girl I saw in the street," said Peggy.
"Very kind and nice, I'm sure," said Miss Earnshaw. "Was it a beggar, Miss Peggy? You're sure your mamma and nurse wouldn't mind?" she added, rather anxiously.
"Oh no," said Peggy. "It's not a beggar. It's a proper little poor girl what nurse gives our nold clothes to."
"Oh," said Baldwin, "one of the children over the cobbler's, I suppose. But, Peggy," he was going on to say he didn't think his sister had ever been allowed to run down to the back street to speak to them, only he was so slow and so long of making up his mind that, as Fanny just then came in with the tea, which made a little bustle, nobody attended to him, and Miss Earnshaw remained quite satisfied that all was right.
The buns tasted very good—all the better to Peggy from the feeling that poor lame Lizzie was perhaps eating hers at that same moment, and finding it "tasty."
"Does lame people ever get quite better?" she asked the young dressmaker.
"That depends," Miss Earnshaw replied. "If it's through a fall or something that way, outside of them so to say, there's many as gets better. But if it's in them, in the constitution, there's many as stays lame all their lives through."