the slop-jar and jumped down from the wash-stand.

[Illustration: I sat down on the pincushion.]

Her high, old-fashioned bureau tempted me next. There were rows and
rows of pins in a big blue pincushion, put in as evenly as if it had
been done by a machine. I pulled them out, one by one, and dropped
them down behind the bureau. It took some time to do that, but at last
the blue cushion was empty, and I sat down on it to examine the
jewel-case at my leisure. I found the prettiest things in it; an
open-faced locket, set around with pearls, with the picture of a
beautiful young girl in it; a string of bright coral beads, and a
little carnelian ring, and a gold dollar hung on a faded ribbon.

I forgot to tell you that Miss Patricia's bay window is full of
flowers, and that she has a mocking-bird hanging in a cage above the
wire stand that holds her ferns and foliage plants. The mocking-bird's
name is Dick. Now Dick hadn't paid any attention to me until I opened
the jewel-case. As I did so I knocked a hairbrush off the bureau to
the floor, which must have frightened him, for he began to cry out as
if something had caught hold of him. Then he whistled, as if he were
calling a dog. You have no idea what a racket he made. I was afraid
that some of the servants might hear him and come to see what was the
matter. Then, of course, I would be turned out of the room before I
had finished examining all the pretty things. I turned around and
shook my fist at him and chattered at him as savagely as I knew how,
but he kept on, first making that hoarse cry and then whistling as if
calling to a dog.

I determined to stop him in some way or another, so, not waiting to
put down the gold dollar or the little carnelian ring, which were
tightly clenched in one hand, I sprang down from the bureau. Running
up the wire flower-stand below the cage, I shook my fist directly
under his beak. It only made him noisier than ever, and he flew about
the cage like something crazy.

"Be still, won't you? you silly thing!" I shrieked, and in my
desperation I made a grab through the bars at his tail-feathers. A
whole handful came out, and that seemed to make him wilder than
before. He beat himself against the top of the cage and screamed so
loud that I thought it would be better to leave before any one heard
him and came in.

So I jumped across to the cabinet near the window, where the big blue
dragon sat. Then I remembered the sugar-plums inside and