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will be cross,’ said Charlotte.
    ‘I don’t think I will,’ said Emily. ‘I-I think I know what you are thinking, Charlotte.’
    ‘Well,’ said Charlotte, and she lay on her back looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling. ‘Well, people usually do, don’t they?’
    ‘Do what?’
    ‘Lend, not be paid,’ said Charlotte.
    ‘Ye-es,’ said Emily miserably.
    ‘I mean, for an exhibition like that, which is to help people, people usually lend their things, don’t they, to help the other people?’
    ‘That’s what I was thinking-remembering,’ said Emily. ‘Do you remember the animal carving exhibition we went to see? It had labels: Head of a deer, lent by Mr
So-and-So. Rabbit, lent by Mrs Somebody Else. ’
    ‘Ye-es,’ said Charlotte.
    ‘It didn’t say, Hired from Mr So-and-So, ’ said Emily, ‘and that is what being paid means. We have hired out Tottie.’
    ‘That is what she didn’t like,’ said Charlotte, and she was near the truth though that was not the whole truth.
    ‘I felt her being miserable, but I didn’t take any notice – then,’ said Emily.
    ‘Nor I,’ said Charlotte. ‘But I wish I had.’
    ‘I believe Mrs Innisfree offered to pay us because she was sorry we couldn’t get the chairs,’ said Emily.
    ‘We shall go to Mrs Innisfree in the morning and tell her,’ said Emily. ‘I believe she knew we really ought not to have been paid.’
    ‘I believe we really knew that too,’ said Charlotte. ‘It was my fault,’ she added. ‘I said we needed a pound.’
    ‘No, it was mine,’ said Emily. ‘I wanted the chairs more than you did. How funny. I want things so hard, Charlotte, that I don’t think what I am doing. I don’t want
them so much now,’ said Emily.
    ‘Then we shall have ordinary ones?’ asked Charlotte.
    ‘No,’ said Emily firmly and shortly.
    ‘Then what will you do?’
    ‘I don’t know what I shall do,’ said Emily, ‘but not this,’ she said.
    Mrs Innisfree was surprised to see them when they called at her house next morning. She seemed more surprised and pleased when Emily laid the pound note and the shilling on the table.
    ‘After all,’ said Charlotte, ‘we are not blind and if we don’t get paid for Tottie, the children who are blind will get more money.’
    ‘Certainly they will,’ said Mrs Innisfree, and she looked at Emily who had put down the pound note and the shilling and who could not trust herself to speak.
    ‘Emily,’ said Mrs Innisfree, ‘you wanted those chairs badly didn’t you?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Emily ‘but Charlotte likes the dolls’ house just as much as I do.’
    ‘It was your idea to get those chairs?’
    ‘And the couch and the table and the runner,’ put in Charlotte.
    ‘Well – I saw them first,’ said Emily.
    ‘Emilys usually see things first,’ said Mrs Innisfree gently. ‘And it is usually they who have the ideas. I am like Emily; it was my idea to pay you for Tottie, but of course
it is far nicer that you yourselves have decided to lend her to me. Now I have another idea,’ said Mrs Innisfree.
    (You must remember that while this was happening Tottie was packed away in her box under her paper and had no idea of it at all. You must keep remembering that.)
    ‘I want,’ said Mrs Innisfree, ‘to see those old chairs and that old couch. The ones that were in the dolls’ house when it came.’
    ‘But – they are all torn and unstuffed.’
    ‘But the wooden part, the legs and arms and frames?’
    ‘That is still there,’ said Charlotte.
    ‘They should be as good as new, if they were as good in the first place as I think they were. As good as the Wigmore Street ones,’ said Mrs Innisfree. ‘Go and get them
now,’ she said.
    ‘What now? Straight away?’ asked Charlotte, but Emily’s eyes gleamed.
    ‘Straight away,’ said Mrs Innisfree. ‘I might be able to do something with them if they are as I hope.’
    ‘Are they?’ asked Charlotte an hour later when she and Emily had come back.
    ‘Are