"Don't lose it. There are twenty shillings in it, and in each shilling twelve pennies. Good-bye, and don't forget all I've said." She shook my hand in her loose gentlemanly fashion, as if I were a young man going to college instead of a baby girl of seven about to be expatriated alone among strangers, in an alien land, for no conceivable reason but the singular caprice of her who had given me so ill a gift as life. It was the last time I saw my grandmother. I heard soon of her death with complete indifference. "Polly was a jolly Japanese," sang my uncle cheerily, as he caught me up in his arms, and carried me down to the cab, on which Dennis had placed my trunk. Mary Ann was weeping on the steps. She handed me a bag of gingerbread and two apples, and told me I was not to be "down." "'Tis yourself that's worth all the English that ever was born," she asserted, and I dolorously assured her that whatever happened, even if the Queen came in person to hang me, I would keep "up." "That's me hearty," roared Dennis, holding the cab-door. "In with you, and do something for your living." Uncle Lionel lifted me in, gave me a crown-piece, and to my astonishment kissed both my cheeks without hurting me. He stood on the pavement, handsome, smiling, and elegant, as the cab drove off with solitary, bewildered little me as surely a waif as any orphan. And waving his hand, he turned unconcerned on his heel. Chapter XI. PREPARING TO FACE THE WORLD. Was it six weeks or six months since I left that big town house, a disgraced and blighted little being? Time to a child is so unequal a matter. A month may seem a century, a year appear vaguer than a dream. Indeed, I have never yet been able to tell myself how long a space of time actually separated my good-bye to Kildare and my departure for England. Multiplied experiences combined to mislead me. Simultaneously with the opening of the cab-door opened the big door of my stepfather's house, and a group of little golden heads showed in the dark frame. Feet and hands and voluble lips and eyes played together, and for a very brief while I enjoyed the sensations of a heroine. This small world was excited prospectively at the thought of my coming adventures. I was soon to represent to them the unknown, the elsewhere, the eternal dream of "far fair foreign lands." Things were to happen to me that never yet happened to mortal. I was to be snubbed by and to subdue a haughty people. Perhaps if I did something extremely outrageous I should be put into prison, with chains round my feet and wrists. Pending which, I was to travel for several hours by land and several hours by water. "She has come already," they shouted gleefully. "Oh, such a dreadful person, Angela! taller than papa, and the skin is quite tight round her eyes and mouth as if she couldn't laugh."