not to laugh.

'How do you mean, Biddy?' asked her father.

'I'm very tiresome to teach; often I'm very cross indeed,' replied the
child complacently.

'But you _need_ not be; you can help being so if you try,' said Mr.
Vane.

'Well, I don't like trying, I suppose it's that,' she answered.

For the moment her father thought it wiser to say no more.

Mr. Redding happened to call that morning, and at luncheon Mrs. Vane
told Alie and Bride that she was going to Seacove, and they might go
with her.

Alie's eyes sparkled.

'Are you going to----' she began, and her mother seemed to understand
her without any more words.

'Yes,' she said, 'I have got all the measures.'

'And oh, mamma,' asked Biddy, too full of her own ideas to notice
these mysterious sayings, '_will_ you go to Pier Street and let us
show you where Celestina lives. And if you _could_ think of something
you wanted to buy, just any little thing, a pencil or some envelopes
or anything--they've got _everything_--we might go into the shop, and
I _daresay_ if the nice mamma saw you, she'd ask you to step into the
parlour too.'

'We shall see,' mamma replied.

But 'We shall see' was this time accompanied by a little smile, which
made Bridget think that the 'We shall see' was perhaps a way of saying
'Yes.'

Mamma had several messages to do at Seacove, and though Biddy was in a
great hurry to get to Pier Street, she was rather interested in the
other shops also. At the draper's, Mrs. Vane made some small purchases,
as to which Alie showed great concern. One was of pretty pink glazed
calico and of some other shiny stuff called 'chintz'--white, with tiny
lines of different colours; she also bought some red cotton velvet and
neat-looking white spotted muslin, and several yards of very narrow
lace of a very small and dainty pattern, and other things, all of which
interested Alie very much indeed, though after a while Biddy got tired
of looking on, and went and stood at the doorway of the shop.

'I am sorry to give you the trouble of taking down so many things when
I only want such a short length of each,' said Mrs. Vane civilly to the
shopman--or shopwoman, I think it was. 'But the fact is I am buying all
these odds and ends for my little girl's'--and here she glanced round to
make sure that Bridget was out of hearing--'for my little girl's
doll-house, which needs doing up;' by which information Mrs. Cutter, the
draper's wife, was much edified, repeating