‘You ungrateful child! when I have gathered up every scrap of your famous mould with my own dirty hands!’
‘Poor mother,’ cried Mab, ‘that can never bear to dirty her hands! let me see them.’
Mab kissed the fingers which Lady William held out, smiling. ‘After all it is clean dirt, nice mould carefully made, and with everything nice in it both for the colour and the health. Mother, your hands are a little like the auriculas, velvety and soft.’
‘And brown, and purple,’ said Lady William, laughing. Who is it that says that if we would not cry we must laugh? Heaven knows how true it is.
‘It must have been Patty that did it,’ said Mab. ‘That child will never learn to take care. And, oh! the little Dresden shoe is broken that I got off the Christmas tree, and the silver things all scattered. I wish Patty might get a whipping; it is the only thing that would make her take care.’
‘Whip me, then, Mab, for it was I. I was vexed and angry——’
‘You! angry, mother?’
‘It is not a thing that never happens, Mab.’
‘No, said Mab judicially; ‘it is not a thing that never happens: but it only happens when you are put out. And I should like to know what had put you out.’
‘Nothing,’ said Lady William, with a smile.