“Of course I am good on my birthday. What did they do to Ananias and Sapphira, Fern?”
“Dear me, what an odd question, Fluffy!”
“Never mind that; in the Sunday-school the teacher always answers the children’s questions directly; she is a very nice teacher though she has red hair, but she can not help that.”
“Oh, indeed! so I must tell you about Ananias and Sapphira. What is the matter? how pale you look, my pet. Well, they fell down dead because they had told a lie.”
Fluff shifted her pence uneasily.
“That was the lie they told about the land and money that they wanted to keep themselves. I think they were greedy people; one Bath, two plain, and a half-penny for the sweeper. Here is the fourpence, Fern; I don’t think I shall be hungry until tea-time. Now, good-bye, I must go.”
“Why, Fluff, what nonsense! here, Fluff;” but Fluff was scuttling down-stairs as fast as she could go, and Fern was only in time to see her little feet whisking through the shop door.
“I don’t believe there is such another child in the United Kingdom,” she said to herself, laughing. “She is terribly young for her age, but so amusing; how dull it will be without her this afternoon, and poor Crystal so far away, I wish mother had not let her go, or that she were safe home again;” and Fern sighed as she looked round the empty room.
Now it so happened that Fluff had coaxed her mother to let her take a walk alone on her birthday; this was the treat she had selected for the occasion.
She was to wear her best frock and her new hat that Crystal had trimmed for her as a parting present; and she had promised to be very careful, and not go too far. The four-pence was to be expended in buns—so she and her mother had arranged, but Fluff had secretly intended to put it to another purpose, until her conscientious scruples had obliged her to leave it at home instead of paying the omnibus fare that was to save her poor little legs; they would get sorely tired before they reached their destination.