It was the flutter and thrill I wanted, that comes when you've almost reached the bottom of the box, and know the next grab will bring the prize into your fingers.

I was always hoping I might find one of those little rings with a red setting that I could pretend was a real garnet.

No matter if it did always turn out to be nothing but a toy soldier or a tin whistle, there was always some kind of a surprise, and that delicious uncertain creepy feeling first." "Well, you don't always draw a prize in your pop-corn when you're drawing room-mates, I can tell you _that_!" announced Cornie emphatically.
"I was at a school the year before I came here, where I had to room with a girl who almost drove me to distraction.

She was a mild, modest little thing, who, as Cowper says: "'Would not with a peremptory tone Assert the nose upon her face her own.' Yet she'd do things that would provoke me beyond endurance.

Sometimes I could hardly keep from choking her." "What kind of things for instance ?" asked Mary.
"Well, for one thing, and it does seem a little one when you tell it, we had about a thousand photographs, more or less, perched around on the mantel and walls.