ng him, and that this
remembrance was stolen or kept back from nobody. The Princess made
answer, Ah! But when the cottager died it would be discovered there. The
tiny woman told her No; when that time came, it would sink quietly into
her own grave, and would never be found.'

'Well, to be sure!' said Maggy. 'Go on, please.'

'The Princess was very much astonished to hear this, as you may suppose,
Maggy.' ('And well she might be,' said Maggy.)

'So she resolved to watch the tiny woman, and see what came of it. Every
day she drove in her beautiful carriage by the cottage-door, and there
she saw the tiny woman always alone by herself spinning at her wheel,
and she looked at the tiny woman, and the tiny woman looked at her. At
last one day the wheel was still, and the tiny woman was not to be seen.
When the Princess made inquiries why the wheel had stopped, and where
the tiny woman was, she was informed that the wheel had stopped because
there was nobody to turn it, the tiny woman being dead.'

('They ought to have took her to the Hospital,' said Maggy, and then
she'd have got over it.')

'The Princess, after crying a very little for the loss of the tiny
woman, dried her eyes and got out of her carriage at the place where
she had stopped it before, and went to the cottage and peeped in at the
door. There was nobody to look at her now, and nobody for her to look
at, so she went in at once to search for the treasured shadow. But there
was no sign of it to be found anywhere; and then she knew that the tiny
woman had told her the truth, and that it would never give anybody any
trouble, and that it had sunk quietly into her own grave, and that she
and it were at rest together.

'That's all, Maggy.'

The sunset flush was so bright on Little Dorrit's face when she came
thus to the end of her story, that she interposed her hand to shade it.

'Had she got to be old?' Maggy asked.

'The tiny woman?' 'Ah!'

'I don't know,' said Little Dorrit. 'But it would have been just the
same if she had been ever so old.'

'Would it raly!' said Maggy. 'Well, I suppose it would though.' And sat
staring and ruminating.

She sat so long with her eyes wide open, that at length Little Dorrit,
to entice her from her box, rose and looked out of window. As she
glanced down into the yard, she saw Pancks come in and leer up with the
corner of his eye as he went by.

'Who's he, Little Mother?' said Maggy. She had joined her at the window
and