“Put on the oldest, raggedest clothes you can find,” he said to her, “and tie an old handkerchief over your head so’t you’ll look as beggary as possible.  I’ll tear some more holes in the old overalls that I played in last summer, and pull part of the brim off my straw hat.  We’ll take the music-box out of the hall, and put it in my little red wheelbarrow, and you and me and Dago will start off through the streets like the grind-organ man did yesterday, I planned it all last night while everybody in the house was sound asleep.  We’ll sing when the music-box plays songs, and you and Dago can dance when it plays waltzes.  I’ll give you part of the money that we get to buy you the prettiest doll in town.  I’ll take the rest and go off to the place that I’m thinking about.”

He wouldn’t tell her where the place was, although she begged him with tears in her eyes.  “Some place where they’re not cruel to little boys and monkeys,” was all he would tell her.  “Where they don’t ever whip them, and where they don’t mind ’em getting into mischief once in awhile.”

An hour later everything was ready for the start.  Except for the daintily embroidered ruffles of her white linen underskirt, that would show below her old gingham dress, little Elsie might have been taken for the sorriest beggar in town.  The dress was faded and outgrown.  The little shawl she had pinned over her shoulders had one corner burned out of it, and the edges of the hole were scorched and jagged.  A faded silk muffler that she had used in her doll-cradle was drawn tightly over her tousled curls, and tied under her chin.

Phil’s outfit might have come from the ragbag, too, it was so tattered and patched.  But he had forgotten to take off his silver cuff-buttons, and the shoes he wore looked sadly out of place below the grimy jeans overalls.  He was obliged to wear a pair of bright tan-coloured shoes, so new that they squeaked.  They were the only ones he had, for his old ones had been thrown away the day before.  At first he was tempted to go barefoot, but the November wind was chilly, although the sun shone, and he dared not risk it.

It was ten o’clock by the court-house dial, and the bell was on the last stroke, when little Elsie held open the alley-gate and Phil trundled the red wheelbarrow through.  I was perched on the music-box.  Rather an uncertain seat, I found it, as it slid back and forth at every step.  I had to hold on so tight that my arms were sore for two days afterward.

“Which way shall we go?” asked little Elsie, as she fastened the gate behind us.  Phil looked up and down the alley in an uncertain way, and then said, “When the princes in the fairy tales start out into the wide world to make their fortunes, they blow a leather up into the air and follow that.”

“Here’s one,” cried Elsie, running forward to pick up a bit of fluffy white down that had blown over from a pigeon-house on the roof of a neighbouring stable.  “I’ll blow, and you say the charm.”  She puckered up her rosy little mouth and gave a quick puff.