Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished

CHAPTER ONE.

AN ACCIDENT AND SOME OF ITS CURIOUS RESULTS.

Every one has heard of those ponies--those shaggy, chubby,
innocent-looking little creatures--for which the world is indebted, we
suppose, to Shetland.

Well, once on a time, one of the most innocent-looking, chubbiest, and
shaggiest of Shetland ponies--a dark brown one--stood at the door of a
mansion in the west-end of London.

It was attached to a wickerwork vehicle which resembled a large
clothes-basket on small wheels. We do not mean, of course, that the
pony was affectionately attached to it. No; the attachment was
involuntary and unavoidable, by reason of a brand-new yellow leather
harness with brass buckles. It objected to the attachment, obviously,
for it sidled this way, and straddled that way, and whisked its enormous
little tail, and tossed its rotund little head, and stamped its
ridiculously small feet; and champed its miniature bit, as if it had
been a war-horse of the largest size, fit to carry a Wallace, a Bruce,
or a Richard of the Lion-heart, into the midst of raging battle.

And no wonder; for many months had not elapsed since that brown creature
had kicked up its little heels, and twirled its tail, and shaken its
shaggy mane in all the wild exuberance of early youth and unfettered
freedom on the heather hills of its native island.

In the four-wheeled basket sat a little girl whom it is useless to
describe as beautiful. She was far beyond that! Her delicate colour,
her little straight nose, her sparkling teeth, her rosebud of a mouth,
her enormous blue eyes, and floods of yellow hair--pooh! these are not
worth mentioning in the same sentence with her expression. It was that
which carried all before it, and swept up the adoration of
man-and-woman-kind as with the besom of fascination.

Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished