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?

The baker's boy was a good-natured fellow, but, as he expressed it
afterward, he thought her the rummiest little lady he had ever met;
indeed, he confided his suspicions to a grocer's lad that she "was a
bit cracky;" but he let her sit on his cart for all that, and trundled
her the length of two or three streets; and further revived her
drooping spirits by a dab of hot brown bread, scooped skillfully out
of the side of a loaf which, as he said, would never show.

After that they got facetious, and admired a Punch and Judy show
together, and parted with deep regret, when a policeman desired them
to move on.

Fluff began to feel rather lonely after this. It was getting late, she
was afraid, and those little legs of hers ached dreadfully; but she
fell in at the park gates with a playful flower-girl, who ran a race
with her, basket and all, and then stood and jeered in broad Irish
because she was beaten, while Fluff sat down, sulky and exhausted, on
a bench under the trees.

It was nearly tea-time now, she thought; in another hour or so Fern
would be sending the old crier after her. She wondered how she was to
get back. She was very thirsty, and felt half inclined to cry; and
then it struck her that the large splendid-looking building opposite
might be Belgrave House, and she ran up to a workman just passing and
asked him.

"No," he said, eying her wondering, "tha