Poppie did not find it nice. She preferred all London to the biggest house and garden in it. True, there was that marvelous rose-tree. But free-born creatures cannot live upon the contemplation of roses. After all, the thing she had been brought up to--the streets, the kennels with their occasional crusts, pennies, and bits of glass, the holes to creep into, and the endless room for scudding--was better. And her unsuitable dress, which did attract the eyes of the passers--being such as was seldom seen in connection with bare hair and legs--would soon accommodate itself to circumstances, taking the form of rags before a week was over, to which change of condition no care of Poppie's would interpose an obstacle. For, like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, she had no care. She did not know what it meant. And possibly the great One who made her may have different ideas about respectability from those of dining aldermen and members of Parliament from certain boroughs that might be named. At the porter's cry Lucy started, and found to her dismay that her charge was gone. She could not, however, help a certain somewhat malicious pleasure at the man's discomfiture and the baby-like way in which he lamented over his bitten finger. He forgot himself so far as to call her "the little devil"--which was quite in accordance with his respectable way of thinking. Both Mrs. Morgenstern and Lucy, after the first disappointment and vexation were over, laughed heartily at the affair, and even Miriam was worked up to a smile at last. But she continued very mournful, notwithstanding, over the loss of her sister, as she would call her.