Hard Work,'
'Prizes for Hard Play,' 'Presents for Anticipating Wishes,' 'Gifts for
Forgetting Number One,' and so on.

It took only a short time to see these things, and meanwhile the little
old man was standing in front of the fire, beaming merrily. Then, when
all four had taken a good look, and were feeling rather bad in
consequence, for they could not feel entitled to much beyond pills and
powders, he led them into the inner room--his consulting-room he called
it--saying, 'Come along, little sorrowful ones, and we will inquire into
the great trouble.' And at once they had some difficulty in remembering
their grievance at all, although an hour ago it had seemed to fill the
whole landscape.

VIII

THE ADVICE

'Now,' said the Ameliorator, when they were all comfortably inside the
inner room, 'I want to tell you about some of my friends. "Ladies first"
is a good rule: let me tell you about a little girl I once knew,'--here
he laid his hand on Beryl's head--'who had just such soft hair as this,
and just such a gloomy little face.' Here Beryl smiled, in spite of
herself. 'Yes,' added the Ameliorator, 'and just such a smile now and
then. And what do you think the trouble was? Why, although she had no
fewer than fifteen dolls, all given to her by thoughtful friends, she
wanted a new one. These fifteen dolls were very good ones, especially
the faithful old Arthur John, a wooden gentleman of strong affections
and no nose worth mentioning, yet nothing would do but she must have an
aristocratic pink wax lady in white muslin, that hung in a certain shop
window and stared hard all day at the little ragamuffins who pressed
their faces against the pane and said, "O my, ain't she a beauty!" Why
the little girl wanted her I could never understand, because she had no
expression at all, and my young friend had a brother who had declared
that if any more "sappy wax dummies" were brought into the house, he
would put them to bed in the oven. Still, in spite of this terrible
threat, she did want her, and in her despair she came to me about it.

'Well,' added the Ameliorator, 'what do you think I did? I made her sit
down by this very table, and I opened this very drawer, and I took out
these very pictures, and as I showed them to her' (here he began to lay
before the bewildered Beryl picture after picture of ragged street
children) 'I told her how these little wretches were forced to run about
all day in the gutters, whether i