“Don’t you hope she’ll ask for her figure?” whispered Mrs. Venham Honiton; but Mrs. Pontifex was so fortunate as to be able to remember nothing, and the Chela appealed to the company generally, who, from a mean dread of being compromised as witnesses, avoided his eye with singular unanimity.
At last an elaborately dishevelled lady, with a sad smile and a low drawling voice, said: “When I was quite a child I had a possession I dearly, dearly loved — a poor old doll with no legs and arms and no features–just an ordinary ninepin it was, but it was almost the only thing I cared for in the world! Do you know, I have so often wished I could see its poor old round head and long neck once more!”
There was a touch of pathos about this that touched all with any tendency to sentiment. The Chela him
