o be unladylike: but then, of course, I am no authority
on doll etiquette--had not yet, I think, quite departed from her. Nay,
am I not sure that it had not? Do I not remember, years later, peeping
into a certain room, the walls of which are covered with works of art of
a character calculated to send any aesthetic person mad, and seeing her,
sitting on the floor, before a red brick mansion, containing two rooms
and a kitchen; and are not her hands trembling with delight as she
arranges the three real tin plates upon the dresser? And does she not
knock at the real brass knocker upon the real front door until it comes
off, and I have to sit down beside her on the floor and screw it on
again?

Perhaps, however, it is unwise for me to recall these things, and bring
them forward thus in evidence against her, for cannot she in turn laugh
at me? Did not I also assist in the arrangement and appointment of that
house beautiful? We differed on the matter of the drawing-room carpet, I
recollect. Ethelbertha fancied a dark blue velvet, but I felt sure,
taking the wall-paper into consideration, that some shade of terra-cotta
would harmonise best. She agreed with me in the end, and we manufactured
one out of an old chest protector. It had a really charming effect, and
gave a delightfully warm tone to the room. The blue velvet we put in the
kitchen. I deemed this extravagance, but Ethelbertha said that servants
thought a lot of a good carpet, and that it paid to humour them in little
things, when practicable.

The bedroom had one big bed and a cot in it; but I could not see where
the girl was going to sleep. The architect had overlooked her
altogether: that is so like an architect. The house also suffered from
the inconvenience common to residences of its class, of possessing no
stairs, so that to move from one room to another it was necessary to
burst your way up through the ceiling, or else to come outside and climb
in through a window; either of which methods must be fatiguing when you
come to do it often.

Apart from these drawbacks, however, the house was one that any doll
agent would have been justified in describing as a "most desirable family
residence"; and it had been furnished with a lavishness that bordered on
positive ostentation. In the bedroom there was a washing-stand, and on
the washing-stand there stood a jug and basin, and in the jug there was
real water. But all this was as nothing. I have known me