"Will you ask?" she answered; "I don't like to."
"Nonsense! ask her yourself; she won't eat you, or Gipsey either;" for Gipsey was sidling away between my feet, as if he were alarmed too; the saucy scamp!
Thereupon Nelly moved closer to the poor girl, and said, in a kind, little, timid voice, "Do you like dolls?"
"Yes, very much!" said the child, with a surprised look.
"Oh, so do I!" cried Nelly, rapturously. "I have lots of them at home; let me see, there's Jenny, and Willie, and old black Nanny, and—" she stopped short, seeing the other look wistfully at her, and then said, "Oh, I forgot! you have none, perhaps; would you like to have one?"
"Oh yes, miss!" said the child; "not so much for myself, though, as my little sister; she is sick, and can't do anything, poor Clara! but I work, and help my mother!" she added, proudly.
"What does your mother do?" asked Jimmy.
"She makes shirts for the army; and I do all the button holes."
"I can't make a button hole," said Nelly, regretfully.
Here I proposed we should walk into the shop, and after we had looked all we wanted to at the pretty things, and the children, with screams of delight, had ridden in turn on a "spring rocking horse," that sent them flying half way to the top of the glass cases behind the counter, I gave Jimmy and Nelly each two shillings, and told them to buy whatever the little girl would like best. The poor little thing's eyes sparkled with happiness when Nelly bought her the composition doll she chose out of a heap that were piled in a great basket, gorgeously dressed in pink mosquito netting, as I thought, but which Nelly informed me was a "tarletane;" and Jimmy laid out his money on a tiny bowl and pitcher of sprigged china ware, and an astonished china baby sitting in a bath, and looking as if it had turned on the hot water, and couldn't turn it off again.