After this, he appealed confidently to the sympathy of people of every degree, and of "fond parents" especially, to compensate him by flocking in crowds to the circus; adding, that if additional stimulus were wanting to urge the public into "rallying round the Ring," he was prepared to administer it forthwith, in the shape of the smallest dwarf in the world, for whose services he was then in treaty, and whose first appearance before a Rubbleford audience would certainly take place in the course of a few days.
Such was Mr.Jubber's ingenious contrivance for turning to good pecuniary account the ignominious defeat which he had suffered at the hands of Dr.Joyce.
After much patient reasoning and many earnest expostulations, Mrs.Joyce at last succeeded in persuading Mr.Blyth that he might carry little Mary upstairs to her bed, without any danger of awakening her.
The moonbeams were streaming through the windows over the broad, old-fashioned landings of the rectory stair-case, and bathed the child's sleeping face in their lovely light, as Valentine carefully bore her in his own arms to her bedroom.

"Oh!" he whispered to himself as he paused for an instant where the moon shone clearest on the landing; and looked down on her--"Oh! if my poor Lavvie could only see little Mary now." They laid her, still asleep, on the bed, and covered her over lightly with a shawl--then went down stairs again to wait for Mrs.Peckover.
The clown's wife came in half an hour, as she had promised.

They saw sorrow and weariness in her face, as they looked at her.

Besides a bundle with the child's few clothes in it, she brought the hair bracelet and the pocket-handkerchief which had been found on little Mary's mother.
"Wherever the child goes," she said, "these two things must go with her." She addressed Mr.Blyth as she spoke, and gave the hair bracelet and the handkerchief into his own hands.
It seemed rather a relief than a disappointment to Mrs.Peckover to hear that the child was asleep above stairs.

All pain of parting would now be spared, on one side at least.