“In the intervals of his professional pursuits,” writes Mary, “my father walked about London with his little girl in his hand; and one day (it was my birthday, and I was ten years old) he took me into a not very tempting-looking place which was, as I speedily found, a lottery office. An Irish lottery was upon the point of being drawn, and he desired me to choose one out of several bits of printed paper (I did not then know their significance) that lay upon the counter. “‘Choose which number you like best,’ said the dear papa, ‘and that shall be your birthday present.’ “I immediately selected one, and put it into his hand: No. 2224. “‘Ah,’ said my father, examining it, ‘you must choose again. I want to buy a whole ticket, and this is only a quarter. Choose again, my pet.’ “‘No, dear papa, I like this one best.’ “‘Here is the next number,’ interposed the lottery office keeper, ‘No. 2223.’ “‘Ay,’ said my father, ‘that will do just as well. Will it not, Mary? We’ll take that.’ “‘No,’ returned I obstinately, ‘that won’t do. This is my birthday you know, papa, and I am ten years old. Cast up _my_ number and you’ll find that makes ten. The other is only nine.” “My father, superstitious like all speculators, struck with my pertinacity and with the reason I gave, resisted the attempt of the office keeper to tempt me by different tickets, and we had nearly left the shop without a purchase when the clerk who had been examining different desks and drawers, said to his principal: “‘I think, sir, the matter may be managed if the gentleman does not mind paying a few shillings more. That ticket 2224 only came yesterday, and we have still all the shares: one-half, one-quarter, one-eighth, two-sixteenths. It will be just the same if the young lady is set upon it.’ “The young lady was set upon it, and the shares were purchased. “The whole affair was a secret between us, and my father, whenever he got me to himself, talked over our future twenty thousand pounds—just like Alnaschar over his basket of eggs. “Meanwhile time passed on, and one Sunday morning we were all preparing to go to church when a face that I had forgotten, but my father had not, made its appearance. It was the clerk of the lottery office. An express had just arrived from Dublin announcing that No. 2224 had been drawn a prize of twenty thousand pounds, and he had hastened to communicate the good news.” “Ah, me!” writes Miss Mitford in later life. “In less than twenty years what was left of the produce of the ticket so strangely chosen? What? except a Wedgwood dinner-service that my father had had made to commemorate the event, with the Irish harp within the border on one side and his family crest on the other! That fragile and perishable ware outlasted the more perishable money.”