72 THE DOLL AND HER FRIENDS.

my introduction to the world in the bazaar, so that
my beauty was not quite what it had been, I still
retained charms enough to make me a valuable ac-
quisition to a child who had not much choice of toys ;
and my disposition and manners were as amiable
and pleasing as ever. My new mistress and I
soon loved each other dearly; and in her family
I learned that people might be equally happy and
contented under very different outward circum-
stances. ,

Nothing could well be more unlike my former
home than that to which I was now introduced.
Susan, my little mistress, was a child of about the
same age as Rose when she first bought me; but
Susan had no money to spend in toys, and very
little time to play with them, though she enjoyed
them as much as Rose herself. She gave me a
hearty welcome ; and though she could offer me no
furnished house, with its elegancies and comforts,
she assigned me the best place in her power—the
corner of a shelf on which she kept her books, slate,
needlework, and inkstand. And there I lived, sit-
ting on my trunk, and observing human life from a
new point of view. And though my dignity might
appear lowered in the eyes of the unthinking, I felt
that the respectability of my character was really
in no way diminished ; for I was able to fulfil the