ing into a battledore with a red morocco handle.
This struck her as being such a remarkable performance that she
immediately began looking at one thing after another, and watching the
various changes, until she was quite bewildered.

"It's something like a Christmas pantomime," she said to herself; "and
it isn't the slightest use, you know, trying to fancy what anything's
going to be, because everything that happens is so unproblesome. I don't
know where I got _that_ word from," she went on, "but it seems to
express exactly what I mean. F'r instance, there's a little cradle
that's just been turned into a coal-scuttle, and if _that_ isn't
unproblesome, well then--never mind!" (which, as you know, is a
ridiculous way little girls have of finishing their sentences.)

By this time she had got around again to the toy livery-stable, and she
was extremely pleased to find that it had turned into a smart little
baronial castle with a turret at each end, and that the ornamental
tea-cup was just changing, with a good deal of a flourish, into a small
rowboat floating in a little stream that ran by the castle walls.

"Come, _that's_ the finest thing yet!" exclaimed Dorothy, looking at all
this with great admiration; "and I wish a brazen knight would come out
with a trumpet and blow a blast"--you see, she was quite romantic at
times--and she was just admiring the clever way in which the boat was
getting rid of the handle of the tea-cup, when the Dancing-Jack
suddenly stopped talking, and began scrambling over the roof of the
castle. He was extremely pale, and, to Dorothy's alarm, spots of bright
colors were coming out all over him, as if he had been made of stained
glass, and was being lighted up from the inside.

"I believe I'm going to turn into something," he said, glaring wildly
about, and speaking in a very agitated voice.

"Goodness!" exclaimed Dorothy in dismay; "what do you suppose it's going
to be?"

"I think--" said the Jack, solemnly,--"I think it's going to be a
patchwork quilt," but just as he was finishing this remark a sort of
wriggle passed through him, and, to Dorothy's amazement, he turned into
a slender Harlequin all made up of spangles and shining triangles.

Now this was all very well, and, of course, much better than turning
into a quilt of any sort; but as the Dancing-Jack's last remark went on
without stopping, and was taken charge of, so to speak, and finished by
the Harlequin, it mixed up the two in a