fact--and plenty of animals to pet and feed. The only thing was that all
the other people at the farm were grown up, and Seraphina longed very
much for someone to play with. The farmer's daughter, Miss Patty, was
very kind, and always quite willing to play Halma; only it happened that
Halma was not what Seraphina wanted to play.

It was summer, and Seraphina went to bed early, while it was still
daylight. She used to lie awake in the big four-post bed, with the white
dimity curtains, and look at the latticed window and the oak chest of
drawers with the shell boxes on it, and try to make herself dream that
she had another little girl to play with. But she always surprised
herself by waking up in the morning without having dreamed of anything
at all.

The best parlour at the farm was a very nice place, but Seraphina (whose
name takes so long to write that I think I had better call her Fina, as
everyone else did) was not usually allowed to play there, and the blinds
were always drawn down exactly halfway, because that is genteel.

Sometimes Fina was taken into the parlour by Miss Patty, and then Miss
Patty would bring out the curiosities that her brother the sailor had
brought home from his voyages: South Sea necklaces of seeds and beads
and cut-up reeds, and fat idols from India, with far more arms than most
of us could find a use for. Then there were beady pincushions made by
seamen, and a stuffed parrot exactly like life, except that one eye was
out, and Chinese junks in beautiful carved ivory, and a pagoda (or
Chinese temple), and that was of ivory too, and all carved out of one
solid block, Miss Patty said. Fina loved the pagoda best of all the
curiosities. You could see right into it. It was a tower with seven
stories, and it had little gold bells on it that rang when Miss Patty
took off the glass case and gently shook the wooden stand. Of course,
Fina was never allowed to shake it herself.

'Where did it come from?' She asked this question every time she was
shown the pagoda.

'It came from the Emperor of China's own Summer Palace at Pekin,' Miss
Patty always said; 'but my brother Bob never would tell me how he got
it.'

Then, when Fina had had a last peep through the windows of the pagoda,
the glass case would be put on again, and Fina would be told to 'run
along now and play.'

One day she was 'running along and playing' when she met a playfellow.
It was a fat foxhound puppy, very clumsy and very affection