“See, see, mamma!” she cried. “They must be nice people that lives in that basket shop, mustn’t they, for that little girl’s got a clean face, and she’s smilin’ so sweetly?”
“Yes,” said mamma; “it looks as if she had a kind father and mother, and I hope she has. For many poor children have quite as kind fathers and mothers as rich children have, you know, Mary.”
“Like the Perrys—the Perrys at the Lavender Cottages,” said Mary.
And then she went on thinking to herself how nice it would be to live in a “going-about house,” as she called it. And she wished very much indeed she could have seen inside the waggon.
The next thing they passed after that, was a great high carriage with four horses; a man in a red coat was blowing a horn, and there were ever so many ladies and gentlemen sitting up on the top. It made such a dust! Mary began to think mamma was right about the field-side of the hedges, for even though she was a little girl in a carriage and not a flower, she felt quite choked for a minute. Mamma told her it was a stagecoach, and that long ago, before clever men had found out how to make railway trains go, drawn by steam-engines instead of horses, people were obliged to travel in these big coaches.
Mary was very much surprised. She thought there had always been railways, but mamma had not time to explain any more about them to her, for just then the carriage began to make a very rattling noise over the stones, so that they could scarcely hear each other speak. They were entering the town.
Mary looked about her with great interest. It was a long time since she had been there, and the last day she remembered being driven through the streets it had only been to go to the railway station. For the children and their mother were then on their way to visit their grandmamma. That was six months ago, half a year—before Mary’s birthday, which had brought her the wonderful present of Baby Dolly—a very long time ago.
But Mary remembered how she had wished that day to stop at the shops and look in at the windows. And now she was not only going to look in; she was going to go in to help mamma to choose all the things she had to buy.
It was very nice, but it seemed rather to take away her breath again to think of all they had to do. Mary gave a deep sigh, which made her mamma turn round.
“Mary, my dear, you are looking quite troubled,” she said; “what is it?”