“We must have another game of battledore and shuttlecock on the lawn after dinner,” said Fanny, “you seem to like that, and on one side it will be pleasant and shady.”
Norman finding that Fanny had not complained of the way he had treated her garden, became more amiable and agreed to her proposal.
Before going out, however, she persuaded him to sit quiet and listen to a story, which she told him out of one of her picture-books.
The children were playing on the lawn, when Captain Vallery appeared followed by a man carrying a large parcel. Norman went on throwing up the shuttlecock, but Fanny ran to her papa to welcome him with a kiss.
“I have got something for you both, will you like to come in and see the parcel opened,” he said taking it from the man and going into the house.
Hearing his papa’s remark Norman followed him and Fanny, eager to learn what the parcel contained. Captain Vallery had placed it on a chair. While he was speaking to his wife and Mrs Leslie, Norman ran up to it, and although he had not even spoken to his papa, began pulling away at the string.
“Ah, he is a zealous little fellow, he wishes to save me trouble,” observed Captain Vallery, and Fanny hoped that such was the motive which prompted Norman, though she wished he had shown greater pleasure at seeing their papa come back.
Mrs Vallery at her husband’s request now opened the parcel, which Norman notwithstanding his efforts had been unable to do. Among other articles which he had brought for her and Mrs Leslie, she drew out a long parcel carefully done up in silver paper.
“This I think must be for Fanny,” she said.
Fanny, her countenance beaming with pleasure, carefully unwrapped the parcel, and exhibited a beautiful doll with a wax head and shoulders and wax hands looking exactly, she thought, as if they were real flesh.