not the figure that looks well in its natural
state--none of them. There was a want of fulness about them all.
Besides, without their clothes, it might have been difficult to
distinguish the baby from the papa, or the maid from the mistress, and
thus domestic complications might have arisen.

When all was ready for their reception we established them in their home.
We put as much of the baby to bed as the cot would hold, and made the
papa and mamma comfortable in the drawing-room, where they sat on the
floor and stared thoughtfully at each other across the table. (They had
to sit on the floor because the chairs were not big enough.) The girl we
placed in the kitchen, where she leant against the dresser in an attitude
suggestive of drink, embracing the broom we had given her with maudlin
affection. Then we lifted up the house with care, and carried it
cautiously into another room, and with the deftness of experienced
conspirators placed it at the foot of a small bed, on the south-west
corner of which an absurdly small somebody had hung an absurdly small
stocking.

To return to our own doll's house, Ethelbertha and I, discussing the
subject during our return journey in the train, resolved that, next year,
we ourselves would possess a houseboat, a smaller houseboat, if possible,
than even the one we had just seen. It should have art-muslin curtains
and a flag, and the flowers about it should be wild roses and forget-me-
nots. I could work all the morning on the roof, with an awning over me
to keep off the sun, while Ethelbertha trimmed the roses and made cakes
for tea; and in the evenings we would sit out on the little deck, and
Ethelbertha would play the guitar (she would begin learning it at once),
or we could sit quiet and listen to the nightingales.

For, when you are very, very young you dream that the summer is all sunny
days and moonlight nights, that the wind blows always softly from the
west, and that roses will thrive anywhere. But, as you grow older, you
grow tired of waiting for the gray sky to break. So you close the door
and come in, and crouch over the fire, wondering why the winds blow ever
from the east: and you have given up trying to rear roses.

I knew a little cottage girl who saved up her money for months and months
so as to buy a new frock in which to go to a flower-show. But the day of
the flower-show was a wet day, so she wore an old frock instead. And all
the fete days for quite a lon