, and the real fish (a small dab discarded from a herring-net)
which Madam Liberality had got for her.

Her mind was filled with day-dreams of Darling's coming, and of how
she would display to her all the wonders of the seashore, which would
reflect almost as much credit upon her as if she had invented
razor-shells and crabs. She thought so much about it that she began
quite to expect it.

Was it not natural that her godmother should see that she must be
lonely, and ask Darling to come and be with her? Perhaps the old lady
had already done so, and the visit was to be a surprise. Madam
Liberality could quite imagine doing a nice thing like this herself,
and she hoped it so strongly that she almost came to believe in it.

Every day she waited hopefully, first for the post, and then for the
time when the coach came in, the hour at which she herself had
arrived; but the coach brought no Darling, and the post brought no
letter to say that she was coming, and Madam Liberality's hopes were
disappointed.

Madam Liberality was accustomed to disappointment.

From her earliest years it had been a family joke that poor Madam
Liberality was always in ill-luck's way.

It is true that she was constantly planning; and if one builds
castles, one must expect a few loose stones about one's ears now and
then. But, besides this, her little hopes were constantly being
frustrated by fate.

If the pigs or the hens got into the garden, Madam Liberality's bed
was sure to be laid waste before any one came to the rescue. When a
picnic or a tea-party was in store, if Madam Liberality did not catch
cold, so as to hinder her from going, she was pretty sure to have a
quinsy from fatigue or wet feet afterwards. When she had a treat she
paid for the pleasurable excitement by a headache, just as when she
ate sweet things they gave her toothache.

But if her luck was less than other people's, her courage and good
spirits were more than common. She could think with pleasure about the
treat when she had forgotten the headache. One side of her little face
would look fairly cheerful when the other was obliterated by a flannel
bag of hot camomile flowers, and the whole was redolent of every
horrible domestic remedy for toothache, from oil of cloves and
creosote to a baked onion in the ear. No sufferings abated her energy
for fresh exploits, or quenched the hope that cold, and damp, and
fatigue would not hurt her "this time."

In the intervals of wr