This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
158
POLLYOOLY

the most important day in their year, far more important than her own birthday. She felt that the anniversary must be duly celebrated, and that the fact that she was not herself spending money on her clothes put the due celebration of it within her power and means. She braced herself to the heroic height of resolving to spend half-a-crown on it, if need were.

The Lump therefore was rejoiced to find awaiting him on the breakfast table a woolly lamb, purchased at Carnage's for tenpence halfpenny. After breakfast Pollyooly made haste with her work; and it was finished by dinner-time. After dinner she led and carried him up Chancery Lane; and from the top of it they took a 'bus to the Marble Arch. To her country mind trees and green turf were necessary to festivals.

At the Marble Arch they disembarked, gained the park, and walked decorously down Rotten Row; and it would be hard to say whether their faces or their attire were the more out of place in that haunt of fashion. An angel child, in an oft-washed blue print frock, accompanied by an authentic, but red-headed cherub seemed indeed ill-placed in it; and