and her nice white collar hangs over the edge of her dress. She
is a sweet, pretty little girl, I think, and yet if I tell you the story
of her day, and what had happened before she got that book, you will see
that she is not so happy after all. Just hear what she was doing two or
three hours before.

She stood at the window with a little white nose flattened against the
glass, and two big sorrowful, indignant eyes staring out at them, as the
merry party left the house. There was Uncle Jem, whom she _did_ love,
and whom she felt might have said a kind word for her; and Aunt
Anastasia, who was that sort of a person that no one since she was born
had ever thought of diminishing the five syllables by the use of any
shorter name given in playfulness or love. No one, till that moment at
least, had ever thought of calling her anything but Anastasia; but at
that moment naughty Bab, with her little flattened nose and big mournful
eyes, broke the spell by calling out, "Anasta-sia, indeed! Aunt Nasty, I
think!"

Then there was her Cousin Robert, whom poor Bab honestly believed to be
a much naughtier boy than she was a girl, and yet who generally managed
to keep out of scrapes; and Selina, demure and well-mannered, but whom
Bab's unruly, affectionate little heart had never been able to love; she
was followed by Miss Strictham, the governess. And then there was Mr.
Beresford, the kind, good-natured friend who was staying in the house;
and Bab, just for a minute, felt that she would rather have died than
that he should know she was in disgrace.

She watched them all go off under the bright blue sky, and then she
turned round, and with her back to the window, faced the rather dingy,
dull-looking schoolroom, and burst into a loud roar.

For Bab was only seven years old, and had not yet lost the first
intensity of crying with which power every baby is born. She roared for
two or three minutes, plenty of tears coming with the roar, after which
she felt a good deal better.

"I'm such a little thing to be punished," she said to herself. "I don't
think they ought to punish such a little thing as I am. I _must_ be
young when people live to be as old as grandpapa, with wrinkles over
every scrap of his face, till it looks just like no face at all, only
wrinkles."

[Illustration: "HOLDING HER DRESS UP" (_p. 344_).]

Then Bab examined her little round, rosy, pleasant face in a mirror over
the fireplace.

"Not a single wrinkle," said s