She was to wear her best frock and her new hat that Crystal had
trimmed for her as a parting present; and she had promised to be very
careful, and not go too far. The four-pence was to be expended in
buns--so she and her mother had arranged, but Fluff had secretly
intended to put it to another purpose, until her conscientious
scruples had obliged her to leave it at home instead of paying the
omnibus fare that was to save her poor little legs; they would get
sorely tired before they reached their destination.
Fluff ran down several streets, till she was out of breath, and then
she fell into a little trot; but first she gave the half-penny to a
ragged boy, and begged him earnestly never to tell stories; and after
that she asked him the way to Belgravia. Not getting a lucid answer
from him, as he only told her that he had been a cripple from his
birth and had sold lucifers ever since, which, being brimstone, was
bad for the rheumatics, Fluff told him that she would have repeated
the whole story of Ananias and Sapphira to him, only she had no time,
and then she resumed her walk with much dignity.
And the method of it was this--if method it could be called which had,
in its sidelong movements, the similitude of a crab. First she went
into every baker's shop she passed, and, shaking her head sorrowfully
at the fresh currant-buns on the counters, asked in a confidential
whisper the quickest and shortest way to Belgravia; and when they
wished to know what part, or asked her business, in a kindly way, she
pursed up her mouth and said that was not the question, and would they
please confine themselves to facts, or some such speech, in her odd
abrupt way.
And she looked such a little lady as she spoke, and held her little
head up so proudly, that most of them answered her with civility; and
one big baker's boy, just starting on his afternoon round, said he
would see her past the dangerous crossing in the next street, and put
her a little on her way. Fluff said she was very much obliged to him,
and trotted confidingly by his side, adapting her conversation to her
hearer as she thought best, for she enlarged in a rambling way on the
Miracle of the Loaves, and told him what her teacher said on the
subject of the fishes; and then she became confidential, and explained
to him that she bore an innocent partiality for the moist peely bits
of soft crusts that one could pare off a loaf without showing a sad
deficiency, and how she always liked to take in the bread at Mrs.
Watkins's for the purpose; and lastly, she told him in a weary little
voice that she was going to see grandpapa, who lived in a big house in
Belgravia, but that she was getting very tired, for she had a bone in
her leg--two bones, she thought--and might she sit please on the top
of his little cart to rest her poor legs when he went into the next
house?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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