t bedroom,
Dot was sorely tried. As her eyes passed from the crown-less doll on
the floor to the floss-silk ringlets hanging from the bed-furniture,
her round rosy face grew rounder and rosier, and tears burst from her
eyes. But in a moment more she clenched her little fists, forced back
the tears, and gave vent to her favourite saying, "I don't care."

That sentence was Dot's bane and antidote; it was her vice and her
virtue. It was her standing consolation, and it brought her into all
her scrapes. It was her one panacea for all the ups and downs of her
life (and in the nursery where Sam developed his organ of
destructiveness there were ups and downs not a few); and it was the
form her naughtiness took when she was naughty.

"Don't care fell into a goose-pond, Miss Dot," said Nurse, on one
occasion of the kind.

"I don't care if he did," said Miss Dot; and as Nurse knew no further
feature of the goose-pond adventure which met this view of it, she
closed the subject by putting Dot into the corner.

In the strength of _Don't care_, and her love for Sam, Dot bore much and
long. Her dolls perished by ingenious but untimely deaths. Her toys were
put to purposes for which they were never intended, and suffered
accordingly. But Sam was penitent and Dot was heroic. Florinda's scalp was
mended with a hot knitting-needle and a perpetual bonnet, and Dot rescued
her paint-brushes from the glue-pot, and smelt her india-rubber as it
boiled down in Sam's waterproof manufactory, with long-suffering
forbearance.

There are, however, as we have said, limits to everything. An
earthquake celebrated with the whole contents of the toy cupboard is not
to be borne.

The matter was this. Early one morning Sam announced that he had a
glorious project on hand. He was going to give a grand show and
entertainment, far surpassing all the nursery imitations of circuses,
conjurors, lectures on chemistry, and so forth, with which they had
ever amused themselves. He refused to confide his plans to the faithful
Dot; but he begged her to lend him all the toys she possessed, in
return for which she was to be the sole spectator of the fun. He let
out that the idea had suggested itself to him after the sight of a
Diorama to which they had been taken, but he would not allow that it
was anything of the same kind; in proof of which she was at liberty to
keep back her paint-box. Dot tried hard to penetrate the secret, and to
reserve some of her things f