When Audrey appeared downstairs in her clean pinafore, she stood at the shop-door watching her aunt, who was weighing out a pound of tea for a customer—a stout, rosy woman with a basket on her arm.
"Aunt Cordelia," began the child; but the customer's tongue was going so fast that her aunt did not hear her.
"Aunt Cordelia," said the child again, as the woman, having finished her long story, took up her parcels, put them in her basket, and departed.
"Well, Audrey?"
"May I go out and play, Aunt Cordelia?"
"Go out and play? No, indeed!" said her aunt indignantly. "Go out and dirty another clean pinafore? Not if I know it! Take your doll and play with it in the window-seat, and keep yourself clean for five minutes, if you can do such a thing."
Audrey obeyed without a word, for she had been taught to do as she was told. She went into the parlour and took up her poor old wooden doll Olivia, who had lost all the colour from her cheeks and all the hair from her head. Audrey did not play with her; she stood with her in her arms gazing through the small square diamond-paned window into her playground outside.
[CHAPTER II]
A Curious Playground
AUDREY stood a long time looking out of that window. It opened like a door, and the ground outside was only two feet below it. Audrey could get into her playground in a moment by jumping through the window; and oh, how she longed to be there!