"Fiss, whiss, whiss! Did ever I think I should have come to this?" And: "Alack, and well-a-day! Will _nobody_ come To take us away?" As soon as she had recovered from her amazement, Pet opened the wardrobe, and there she saw a long row of gowns, hanging in all sorts of despondent attitudes, some hooked up by their sleeves, others caught by the waist with their bodies doubled together. "Here is somebody at last, thank goodness!" cried a dark-brown silk which was greatly crumpled, and looked very uncomfortable hanging up by its shoulder. "Oh, gowns, gowns!" cried Pet, staring at these strange grumblers with her round, blue eyes, "whatever do you want?" "_Want_?" cried the brown silk; "why, of course, to be taken out and given to the poor." "The poor again!" cried Pet. "Who can these poor be at all, I wonder?" "People who cannot buy clothing enough for themselves," said the brown silk. "When your dear mother was alive she always gave her old gowns to the poor. Only think how nice I should be for the respectable mother of a family to go to church in on Sundays, instead of being rumpled in here out of the daylight with the moths eating me." "And I," cried a pink muslin, "what a pretty holiday frock I should make for the industrious young school-mistress who supports her poor grandfather and grandmother." "And I! and I! and I!" shrieked many little rustling voices, each describing the possible usefulness of a particular gown. "Yes! we should all turn to account," continued the brown silk, "all except, perhaps, one or two very grand, stiff old fogies in velvet and brocade and cloth-of-gold; and even these might be cut up into jackets for the old clown who tumbles on the village green for the children's amusement." "My breath is quite taken away," cried Pet. "I shall certainly see that you are all taken out and given to the poor immediately." "She is her mother's daughter after all;" said the brown silk, triumphantly; and Pet closed the door upon a chorus of little murmurs of satisfaction from the imprisoned gowns. "This is a very curious adventure," thought the little queen, as she trotted on, fancying she saw faces grinning at her out of the furniture and down from the ceiling; and then she stopped again, quite sure she heard very peculiar sounds coming out of an antique bureau which stood in a corner. After her conversation with the gowns this did not surprise her much at all, and she put her ear to the keyhole at once. "Clink! Clink! What do you think? Here we are Shut up in a drawer," cried the queer little voices coming out of the bureau. "What can _this_ be about, I wonder?" said Pet, and turning the key, peeped in. There she beheld a whole heap of gold and silver lying in the depths of the bureau, all the guineas and shillings hopping about and clinking against each other and singing: "Take us out And give us about, And then we shall do Some good, no doubt!"