It is true that she was constantly planning; and if one builds castles, one must expect a few loose stones about one’s ears now and then.  But, besides this, her little hopes were constantly being frustrated by fate.

If the pigs or the hens got into the garden, Madam Liberality’s bed was sure to be laid waste before any one came to the rescue.  When a picnic or a tea-party was in store, if Madam Liberality did not catch cold, so as to hinder her from going, she was pretty sure to have a quinsy from fatigue or wet feet afterwards.  When she had a treat she paid for the pleasurable excitement by a headache, just as when she ate sweet things they gave her toothache.

But if her luck was less than other people’s, her courage and good spirits were more than common.  She could think with pleasure about the treat when she had forgotten the headache.  One side of her little face would look fairly cheerful when the other was obliterated by a flannel bag of hot camomile flowers, and the whole was redolent of every horrible domestic remedy for toothache, from oil of cloves and creosote to a baked onion in the ear.  No sufferings abated her energy for fresh exploits, or quenched the hope that cold, and damp, and fatigue would not hurt her “this time.”

In the intervals of wringing out hot flannels for her own quinsy, she would amuse herself by devising a desert island expedition on a larger and possibly a damper scale than hitherto, against the time when she should be out again.

It is a very old simile, but Madam Liberality really was like a cork rising on the top of the very wave of ill-luck that had swallowed up her hopes.  Her little white face and undaunted spirit bobbed up after each mischance or malady as ready and hopeful as ever.

Though her day-dream about Darling and the shore palace was constantly disappointed, this did not hinder her from indulging new hopes and fancies in another place to which she went with Podmore; a place which was filled with wonders of a different kind from the treasures of the palace on the shore.

It was called the Bazaar.  It would be a very long business to say what was in it.  But amongst other things there were foreign cage-birds, musical-boxes, and camp-stools, and baskets, and polished pebbles, and paper patterns, and a little ladies’ and children’s millinery, and a good deal of mock jewellery, and some very bad soaps and scents, and some very good children’s toys.

It was Madam Liberality’s godmother who first took her to the bazaar.  A titled lady of her acquaintance had heard that wire flower-baskets of a certain shape could be bought in the bazaar cheaper (by two-pence-halfpenny each) than in London; and after writing to her friend to ascertain the truth of the statement, she wrote again to authorize her to purchase three on her behalf.  So Madam Liberality’s godmother ordered out the blue carriage and pair, and drove with her little cousin to the bazaar.