But though Polly opened her mouth so wide, and smacked her lips, and made every other gratifying demonstration, not for one moment would she cede possession of the treasure she had found in Bonny’s window. Even while most absorbed in absorbing, she nursed it jealously on her lap; and even when her father had lit his pipe from Bonny’s bonfire, and was ready to hoist her again over the footboard, the child stuck fast to her new delight, and set up a sturdy yell when the owner came to reclaim it from her. “Now don’t ’ee, don’t ’ee, that’s a dear,” began the gentle pork-butcher, as the pigs in the cart caught up the strain, and echo had enough to do; for Polly of course redoubled her wailings, as all little dears must, when coaxed to stop; “here, Bonny, here lad, I’ll gie thee sixpence for un, though her ain’t worth a penny, I doubt. And thou may’st call to-morrow, and the Misses ’ll gie thee a clot of sassages.” Bonny looked longingly at his fetish; but gratitude and true love got the better of veneration. Polly, moreover, might well be trusted to preserve this idol, until in the day when he made his own, it should return into his bosom. And so it came to pass that this Palladium of the hermitage was set up at the head of Polly Bottler’s little crib, and installed in the post of her favourite doll. CHAPTER XXXIV. UNDER DEADLY FIRE. Though Coombe Lorraine was so old a mansion, and so full of old customs, the Christmas of the “comet year” was as dull as a Sunday in a warehouse. Hilary (who had always been the life of the place) was far away, fed upon hardships and short rations. Alice, though full sometimes of spirits, at other times would run away and fret, and blame herself, as if the whole of the fault was on her side. This was of course an absurd idea; but sensitive girls, in moods of dejection, are not good judges of absurdity; and Alice at such times fully believed that if she had not intercepted so much of her father’s affection from her brother, things would have been very different. It might have been so; but the answer was, that she never had wittingly stood between them; but on the contrary had laid herself out, even at the risk of offending both, to bring their widely different natures into kinder unity.