“And Beauty was as good as possible to her, though I have heard that other people did not find her so.
“Mrs. Meadow took the milk-pails at the dairy door, and my mistress came back into the kitchen to get tea. She put up a leaf of the brown table and set a tray on it, and out of one of the cupboards she fetched two tea-cups and saucers; so I knew there were no more in the family. Then two little blue-edged plates and horn-handled knives, and the rest of the things; and when the tea was made she dressed up the fire, and stood looking at it and the tea-table by turns, till her mother showed herself at the door, and came in taking off her apron. She was the nicest-looking woman you ever saw.”
“She wasn’t as nice as my mother,” said Carl.
“Mrs. Krinken never was half so nice. She was the best-natured, cheerfullest, pleasantest-faced woman you could find, as bright as one of her own red apples.”
“Mine are bright,” said Carl.
“Yours are bright for Christmas, but hers were bright for every day. Everything about her was bright. Her spoons, and the apples, and the brass candlesticks, and the milk-pans, and the glass in the windows, and her own kind heart. The mother and daughter had a very cozy tea; and I was laid upon the table and my story told, or rather the story of my being found; and it was decided that I should remain in the keeping of the finder, whom her mother, by some freak of habit, rarely called anything but ‘Silky.’”
“What for?” said Carl.
“Maybe you’ll find out if you don’t ask so many questions,” said the purse snappishly. ‘It’s yours, Silky,’ Mrs. Meadow said, after looking at me and rubbing the silver mountings. ‘It’s odd such a handsome purse should have no money in it.’
“‘I’m not going to put it away out of sight, mother,’ said Silky; ‘I’m going to have the good of it. I’ll keep it to hold my milk-money.’
“‘Well, dear, here goes the first,’ said Mrs. Meadow;—‘here’s a silver penny I took for milk while you were after the cows.’