At this moment Joseph called to me through the open window which led into the garden—­

“Oh, Selina!  I am so sorry; but when I got to the shop I couldn’t remember whether it was a quarter of a yard of ribbon or three-quarters that you wanted for the doll’s hat.”

Joseph was always doing stupid things like this.  It vexed me very much, and I jumped up and hastily seized my doll to go out and speak to him, saying, as I did so, that “boys were enough to drive one wild, and one might as well ask the poodle to do anything as Joseph.”  And it was not till I had flounced out of the drawing-room that I felt rather hot and uncomfortable to remember that I had tossed my head, and knitted my brows, and jerked my chin, and pouted my lips, and shaken my skirts, and kicked up my heels, as I did so, and that my godmother had probably been observing me through her gold eye-glasses.

CHAPTER II.

“It is easier to prevent ill habits than to break them.”—­OLD PROVERB.

I must say that Joseph was rather a stupid boy.  He was only a year younger than me, but I never could make him understand exactly what I wanted him to do when we played together; and he was always saying, “Oh, I say, look here, Selina!” and proposing some silly plan of his own.  But he was very good-natured, and when we were alone I let him be uncle to the dolls.  When we spent the day with Maud Mary, however, we never let him play with the baby-house; but we allowed him to be the postman and the baker, and people of that sort, who knock and ring, and we sent him messages.

During the first week of our visit to Lady Elizabeth, the weather was so fine that Joseph and I played all day long in the garden.  Then it became rainy, and we quarrelled over the old swing and the imperfect backgammon board in the lumber-room, where we were allowed to amuse ourselves.  But one morning when we went to our play-room, after drilling with Sergeant Walker, Joseph found a model fortress and wooden soldiers and cannon in one corner of the room; and I found a Dutch market, with all kinds of wooden booths, and little tables to have tea at in another.  They were presents from my godmother; and they were far the best kind of toys we had ever had, you could do so many things with them.

Joseph was so happy with his soldiers that he never came near the Dutch fair; and at other times he was always bothering to be allowed to play with the dolls.  At first I was very glad, for I was afraid he would be coming and saying, “Oh, I say, Selina,” and suggesting things; and I wanted to arrange the shops my own way.  But when they were done, and I was taking the dolls from one booth to another to shop, I did think it seemed very odd that Joseph should not even want to walk through the fair.  And when I gave him leave to be a shopkeeper, and to stand in front of each booth in turn, he did not seem at all anxious to come; and he would bring a cannon with him, and hide it behind his back when I came to buy vegetables for the dolls’ dinners.