that I felt sure I had never seen before. It had a deep
rose pink ground, and in the centre there was the sweetest picture of
a dear little shepherdess curtseying to an equally dear little shepherd.

"As I gazed at this cup the idea struck me that it would be delicious to
dress one of my dolls in the little shepherdess's costume, and, eager to
see it more minutely, I opened the glass door, and was just stretching up
my hand for the cup, when I again remembered what my grandmother had
said. I glanced round at her; she was fast asleep; there was no danger;
what harm _could_ it do for me to take the cup into my hand for a moment?
I stretched up and took it. Yes, it was really most lovely, and the
little shepherdess's dress seemed to me a perfect facsimile of the one I
had most admired upstairs in my grandmother's wardrobe--a pea-green satin
over a pale pink or rather salmon-coloured quilted slip. I determined
that Lady Rosabella should have one the same, and I was turning over in
my mind the possibilities of getting satin of the particular shades I
thought so pretty, when a slight sound in the direction, it seemed to me,
of my grandmother's arm-chair, startled me. I turned round hastily--how
it was I cannot tell, but so it was--the beautiful cup fell from my
hands and lay at my feet in, I was going to say, a thousand fragments."

"Oh!" exclaimed Sylvia and Molly--"oh, grandmother, what _did_ you do?"

"First of all," grandmother continued, "first of all I stooped down and
picked up the pieces. There were not a thousand of them--not perhaps
above a dozen, and after all, grandmother was sleeping quietly, but to
all appearance soundly. The sound that had startled me must have been a
fancied one, I said to myself, and oh dear, what a terrible pity I had
been startled!

"I gathered the bits together in my handkerchief, and stood staring at
them in perfect despair. I dared not let myself burst out crying as I was
inclined to do, for grandmother would have heard me and asked what was
the matter, and I felt that I should sink into the earth with shame and
terror if she saw what I had done, and that I had distinctly disobeyed
her. My only idea was to conceal the mischief. I huddled the bits up
together in my handkerchief, and huddled the handkerchief into my
pocket--the first pocket I had ever had, I rather think--and then I
looked up to see if the absence of the cup was very conspicuous. I
thought not; the saucer was still there