Just then there came out of a shop in front of them--a baker's, I think
it was--a small figure which walked on slowly some paces before them.

'That's the little girl of the dolls' chairs,' exclaimed Bridget. 'Shall
I run on and ask her? I don't mind.'

'You never do,' said Alie, and indeed Biddy was most comfortably
untroubled with shyness.

'Yes, run on and see if she knows where it is.'

Off trotted Biddy, her precious purchases tightly clasped in her hands.

'Little girl,' she called, when she got close to the other child.

[Illustration: 'Little girl,' she called, when she got close to the
other child. P. 75.]

The little girl turned, and looked at Biddy full in the face with her
grave earnest eyes without speaking. And for half a moment Bridget did
feel something approaching to shyness, but it gave her a comfortable
fellow-feeling to see that the small stranger was also still carrying
the little chairs she had bought. They were not done up in paper like
Biddy's--she had not waited for that,--but she had covered them loosely
with a very clean, very diminutive pocket-handkerchief, and Bridget saw
quite well what they were.

'Please,' Biddy went on, slightly breathless--it did not take much to
put Biddy out of breath--'please can you tell us where Mr. Fairchild's