r, without a soul left at home but the Plynck's
cerulean Echo and the sleeping Snoodle.

As soon as they passed through the hedge they found themselves in a
picturesque broken country, rather difficult to traverse, but very
prettily decorated with rocks, streams, and waterfalls. Little groves
of cedars, the exact size and shape of Christmas-trees, grew out of
the rocks; the candles were already full-grown, but Schlorge sent the
Japanese doll running back to tell Sara that she must not light them,
as they would not be ripe till Christmas Eve. Sara had never seen a
prettier place, but she was rather worried by a maternal anxiety about
the dolls. For it was certainly not a very safe place for them. Of
course the Brown Teddy-Bear and the Billiken were all right, though
the latter might come to grief if he should fall on his head. The
Japanese doll, who had lost a hand, was unbreakable; but unbreakable
only means that you may be dropped from a reasonable height upon
hard-wood floors, but not from a second-story window on concrete or
asphalt. That was how the Japanese doll had lost his hand (it would
have been his head, but for the fact that the accident happened while
he was indisposed from neuralgia, and had his head pinned up in the
Baby's flannel petticoat). And these rocks certainly looked as hard as
any pavement. And even as Sara worried, the worst happened: she heard
a dreadful cracking sound, followed by a shrill clamor from the dolls
and a hoarse cry from Schlorge, and the grim, excited voice of the
Snimmy's wife. It was by no means a pleasant sound, like the cracking
of breaking rules: no, it was the familiar, heart-rending sound that
makes the heart of any mother of dolls turn cold. Sara went leaping
and scrambling down the rocks, with the Plynck and the Teacup hovering
anxiously over her. In a few moments she reached the scene of the
accident, and found them all gathered around the Kewpie, who lay in
the lap of the Snimmy's wife with both legs broken. Sara ran and knelt
beside her.

"Now, here, don't you go and burst into tears," said Schlorge,
speaking in the gruff tone an anxious doctor uses toward an excitable
patient. "I'll have my hands full mending your baby here, without
having to mend you. He has no internal injuries," he added, turning
the Kewpie upside down and peering down the stumps of his legs (which
were hollow) into a perfectly pink and smooth and healthy-looking
interior, "and you might have. Bes