Maud Mary coming!  I danced for joy, and kissed my godmother, and expressed my delight again and again.  I should have liked to talk about it to Joseph, but he had plunged into the Thirty Years’ War, and had no attention to give me.

It was a custom in the neighbourhood where my mother lived to call people by double Christian names, John Thomas, William Edward, and so forth; but my godmother never called Maud Mary anything but Maud.

It was possible that my darling friend might arrive by the twelve o’clock train, and the carriage was sent to meet her, whilst I danced up and down the big hall with impatience.  When it came back without her my disappointment knew no bounds.  I felt sure that the Ibbetsons’ coachman had been unpunctual, or dear Maud Mary’s nurse had been cross, as usual, and had not tried to get her things packed.  I rushed into the library full of my forebodings, but my godmother only said, “No grumbling, my dear!” and Joseph called out, “Oh, I say, Selina, I wish you wouldn’t swing the doors so:  you’ve knocked down Wallenstein, and he’s fallen on the top of Gustavus Adolphus;” and I had to compose myself as best I could till the five o’clock train.

Then she came.  Darling Maud Mary!

Perhaps it was because I crushed her new feather in kissing her (and Maud Mary was very particular about her clothes); perhaps it was because she was tired with travelling, which I forgot; or perhaps it was because she would rather have had tea first, that Maud Mary was not quite so nice about the Dutch fair as I should have liked her to be.

She said she rather wondered that Lady Elizabeth had not given me a big dolls’ house like hers instead; that she had come away in such a hurry that she forgot to lock hers up, and she should not be the least surprised if the kitten got into it and broke something, but “it did seem rather odd” to be invited in such a very hurried way; that just when she was going to a big house to pay a grand visit, of course the dressmaker “disappointed” Mrs. Ibbetson, but “that was the way things always did happen;” that the last time Mr. Ibbetson was in Paris he offered to bring her a dolls’ railway train, with real first-class carriages really stuffed, but she said she would rather have a locket, and that was the very one which was hanging round her neck, and which was much handsomer than Lucy Jane Smith’s, which cost five pounds in London.

Maud Mary’s inattention to the fair and the dolls was so obvious that I followed my godmother’s advice, and “made the best of it” by saying, “I’m afraid you’re very much tired, darling?”

Maud Mary tossed her chin and frowned.

It was “enough to tire anybody,” she said, to travel on that particular line.  The railway of which her papa was a director was very differently managed.

I think my godmother’s courtesy to us, and her thoughtful kindness, had fixed her repeated hints about self-control and good manners rather firmly in my head.  I distinctly remember making an effort to forget my toys and think of Maud Mary’s comfort.