rs they stop.

Next she looked out of the window, and saw the decorated flower-bed,
just as she had left it, very bright and beautiful.

'Well, it _does_ look nice,' she said. 'I don't care what they say.'

Then she looked round the room for something to read; there was nothing.
The old-fashioned best bedrooms never did have anything. Only on the
large dressing-table, on the left-hand side of the oval swing-glass,
was one book covered in red velvet, and on it, very twistily
embroidered in yellow silk and mixed up with misleading leaves and
squiggles were the letters, A.B.C.

'Perhaps it's a picture alphabet,' said Mabel, and was quite pleased,
though of course she was much too old to care for alphabets. Only when
one is very unhappy and very dull, anything is better than nothing. She
opened the book.

'Why, it's only a time-table!' she said. 'I suppose it's for people when
they want to go away, and Auntie puts it here in case they suddenly make
up their minds to go, and feel that they can't wait another minute. I
feel like that, only it's no good, and I expect other people do too.'

She had learned how to use the dictionary, and this seemed to go the
same way. She looked up the names of all the places she knew.--Brighton
where she had once spent a month, Rugby where her brother was at school,
and Home, which was Amberley--and she saw the times when the trains left
for these places, and wished she could go by those trains.

And once more she looked round the best bedroom which was her prison,
and thought of the Bastille, and wished she had a toad to tame, like the
poor Viscount, or a flower to watch growing, like Picciola, and she was
very sorry for herself, and very angry with her aunt, and very grieved
at the conduct of her parents--she had expected better things from
them--and now they had left her in this dreadful place where no one
loved her, and no one understood her.

There seemed to be no place for toads or flowers in the best room, it
was carpeted all over even in its least noticeable corners. It had
everything a best room ought to have--and everything was of dark shining
mahogany. The toilet-table had a set of red and gold glass things--a
tray, candlesticks, a ring-stand, many little pots with lids, and two
bottles with stoppers. When the stoppers were taken out they smelt very
strange, something like very old scent, and something like cold cream
also very old, and something like going to the dentist's.