cottages, who could not speak yet, would greet her with
a crow and a spring as they were taken in her gentle arms. I have never
seen my dear second mistress since our parting; but I have heard that
she has little ones of her own now to love and care for, although they
do not engross all her thoughts, for the little dark-skinned Hindoos
will run to meet her as eagerly as her old school-class used to do; for
she married a clergyman, who went out to India, and she has never
returned home since. Dr. Stewart died long before her departure, and the
old Rectory home was broken up; and when that happened, Flora gave me to
a little child friend of hers, called Christie Johnson.

"My third mistress was the greatest trial I had; for though she loved me
dearly in a hasty sort of way, she was such a Tomboy, and so
thoughtless, that under her charge I fell into numberless sad scrapes
and accidents. Once I was dropped in the bath by Harold, her little
brother, thereby losing what colour remained to me; and another time I
was run over by a waggon, having been dropped out of the baby's
perambulator, where I had been hastily placed, while Christie ran off to
look for a bird's nest in a thorn bush. Under the awful crushing
progress of that broad wheeled waggon both my wax arms and one of my
legs were hopelessly smashed flat in the dusty road, my head and chest
escaping by a miracle. Christie was terribly vexed at the catastrophe,
but that did not mend my legs and arms, and I have therefore ever since
led a miserable maimed existence. And the worst of it was that Alan and
Willie had lost all respect for me, and never thought it necessary to be
even commonly civil to me, now that my wax arms and legs were gone. I
say _legs_ purposely, for my sole remaining limb came to pieces by a
fall down stairs. From that time my degradation commenced, and my daily
existence was a miserable series of petty tortures, such as the
ingenuity of a boy could alone devise. I was now the helpless and
defenceless prey of those foes of our race; for Christie, although she
occasionally rescued me from utter destruction, was too much of a romp
herself, and too careless to look after my welfare thoroughly!

"And so I found myself now continually reduced to becoming a frequent
and convenient missile to the boys during their incessant wars and
struggles. The stumps of my legs and arms were so very convenient to lay
hold of, as they swung me round their heads, before s