g
bought, and the gas in the schoolroom was already lighted. Outside, the
winter dusk was stealing down among the Camden Town houses.

'I'm glad we got washed in India,' said Cyril. 'We should have been
awfully late if we'd had to go home and scrub.'

'Besides,' Robert said, 'it's much warmer washing in India. I shouldn't
mind it so much if we lived there.'

The thoughtful carpet had dumped the children down in a dusky space
behind the point where the corners of two stalls met. The floor was
littered with string and brown paper, and baskets and boxes were heaped
along the wall.

The children crept out under a stall covered with all sorts of
table-covers and mats and things, embroidered beautifully by idle
ladies with no real work to do. They got out at the end, displacing a
sideboard-cloth adorned with a tasteful pattern of blue geraniums. The
girls got out unobserved, so did Cyril; but Robert, as he cautiously
emerged, was actually walked on by Mrs Biddle, who kept the stall. Her
large, solid foot stood firmly on the small, solid hand of Robert and
who can blame Robert if he DID yell a little?

A crowd instantly collected. Yells are very unusual at bazaars, and
every one was intensely interested. It was several seconds before the
three free children could make Mrs Biddle understand that what she
was walking on was not a schoolroom floor, or even, as she presently
supposed, a dropped pin-cushion, but the living hand of a suffering
child. When she became aware that she really had hurt him, she grew very
angry indeed. When people have hurt other people by accident, the one
who does the hurting is always much the angriest. I wonder why.

'I'm very sorry, I'm sure,' said Mrs Biddle; but she spoke more in anger
than in sorrow. 'Come out! whatever do you mean by creeping about under
the stalls, like earwigs?'

'We were looking at the things in the corner.'

'Such nasty, prying ways,' said Mrs Biddle, 'will never make you
successful in life. There's nothing there but packing and dust.'

'Oh, isn't there!' said Jane. 'That's all you know.'

'Little girl, don't be rude,' said Mrs Biddle, flushing violet.

'She doesn't mean to be; but there ARE some nice things there, all the
same,' said Cyril; who suddenly felt how impossible it was to inform the
listening crowd that all the treasures piled on the carpet were mother's
contributions to the bazaar. No one would believe it; and if they did,
and wrote to thank mother, s