s, as you
shall see.

Amid all the joyful excitement and merry confusion of Christmas
morning, Bessie found time to think over her plan; and she would set
her red lips very firmly whenever she felt her courage giving way the
least in the world. She _would_ be a heroine for once,--would have a
real adventure of her own to relate to a wondering and admiring circle,
that very Christmas night.

While mamma and servants were occupied in preparations for a large
dinner-party, Bessie found opportunities for packing a little basket
with tiny tarts, apples, nuts, and candies; then she put on her pretty
winter coat, trimmed with fur, and her new velvet hat, with a long
scarlet plume, the pride of her heart, and her warm tippet and soft
gloves and high Balmoral boots. Then she took from her drawer a dainty
_porte-monnaie_, well filled with bright new pennies and small silver
coin, and containing a little compartment lined with crimson satin,
wherein two gold dollars dwelt together in state, like a Mongolian king
and queen. Then taking her basket on her arm, and thrusting her hands
into her little muff, she stole down stairs on tiptoe, and made her
escape from the house, unperceived by any one.

Mr. Raeburn lived in the aristocratic part of the city of New York; and
Bessie, thinking that she could not there carry out her plan in a
perfectly satisfactory manner, hailed a down-town stage. Driver and
passengers looked surprised to see a child taking a trip all alone; but
Bessie had such an old, authoritative manner, that they supposed that
all was right. After a long, long ride, she alighted somewhere in the
neighborhood of the poorest and least respectable part of the city. I
may as well tell you now, if you have n't guessed it, Bessie was bound
on a mission, a charitable visit to the poor,--the miserably poor, of
whom she had heard her father read. She anxiously looked around her
for a beggar-child, who should act as her guide to some home of
unmerited misfortune, where virtuous poverty pined, and wept, and
waited. Alas! there were plenty of sad little mendicants on the
streets that day, but Bessie was not easily satisfied. "It must be a
little girl," she said to herself, "very, very poor,--pale, and thin,
and ragged, and sorrowful, but still pretty, and mild-looking. And she
must have a pretty name too, like the little girls that beg in magazine
stories, or sell matches, and are stolen by gypsies, and sing ballads
for