I might be despised; perhaps allowed to go ragged, perhaps even
dirty! My spirits sunk, and had I been human, I should have wept.

But cheerful voices aroused me from this melancholy reverie, and I found
myself restored to the pleasant light in the hands of a
goodhumored-looking little girl, whose reception of me soon banished my
fears. For, although altered since the days of 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 acquisition 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 circumstances.

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, sitting 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 great object
of my existence as well as ever, by giving innocent pleasure, and being
useful in my humble way.

No other dolls now visited me; but I was not deprived of the enjoyments
of inanimate society, for I soon struck up an intimate acquaintance with
an excellent Pen in the inkstand by my side, and we passed our leisure
hours very pleasantly in communicating to each other our past
adventures. His knowledge of life was limited, having resided in that
inkstand, and performed all the writing of the family, ever since he
was a quill. But his experience was wise and virtuous; and he could bear
witness to many an industrious effort at improvement, in which he had
been the willing instrument; and to many a hard struggle for honesty and
independence, which figures of his writing had recorded. I l