"It would be so nice!" answered little Sophy, laughing merrily.

"What would make it nice?" asked the Comedian, turning on her his
solitary piercing eye, with curious interest in his gaze.

Sophy left her seat, and placed herself on a stool at her grandfather's
knee; on that knee she clasped her tiny hands, and shaking aside her
curls, looked into his face with confident fondness. Evidently these two
were much more than grandfather and grandchild: they were friends, they
were equals, they were in the habit of consulting and prattling with each
other. She got at his meaning, however covert his humour; and he to the
core of her heart, through its careless babble. Between you and me,
Reader, I suspect that, in spite of the Comedian's sagacious wrinkles,
the one was as much a child as the other.

"Well," said Sophy, "I will tell you, Grandy, what would make it nice: no
one would vex and affront you,--we should be all by ourselves; and then,
instead of those nasty lamps and those dreadful painted creatures, we
could go out and play in the fields and gather daisies; and I could run
after butterflies, and when I am tired I should come here, where I am
now, any time of the day, and you would tell me stories and pretty
verses, and teach me to write a little better than I do now, and make
such a wise little woman of me; and if I wore gingham--but it need not be
dingy, Grandy--it would be all mine, and you would be all mine too, and
we'd keep a bird, and you'd teach it to sing; and oh, would it not be
nice!"

"But still, Sophy, we should have to live, and we could not live upon
daisies and butterflies. And I can't work now; for the matter of that,