the machinery of my little
plots for the benefit of the rest; and in the second, we had all, I
think, a sort of half-and-half belief, a wilful credulity in reference
to our many fancies (such as fairies and the like), of which it is
impossible to give the exact measure. But when, the six weekly letters
having become rather burdensome, I left off writing answers from Ivan
to myself, the others began to inquire why Ivan never wrote now. As
usual, I refused to give any explanations, and after inventing several
for themselves which answered for awhile, they adopted by general
consent an idea put forth by little Phillis. The child was sitting one
day with her fat cheek on her hand, and her eyes on the rhubarb-pot,
waiting for her share of the correspondence to be read aloud to her,
when the fancy seemed to strike her, and she said quietly, but with an
air of full conviction--

"'_I___ know what it is--_Ivan is dead_.'

"The idea took strange hold of us all. We said, 'Perhaps he is dead,'
and spoke and thought of him as dead, till I think we were fully
persuaded of it. No chair was set for him at the dolls' feasts, and I
gained a sort of melancholy distinction as being without a partner
now. 'You know Mary has no little Russian, since Ivan is dead.'

"When our visible pets died, we buried them with much pomp, to the
sound of a drum and a tin trumpet, in a piece of ground by the
cabbage-bed; but in the present instance that ceremony was impossible.
We resolved, however, to erect a gravestone to the memory of our fancy
friend in his own garden. I had seen letters cut on stone, and was
confident that with a chisel and hammer nothing could be easier. These
the nursery tool-box furnished. I wrote out an elaborate inscription
headed by Reka Dom in Russian characters, and we got a stone and set
to work. The task, however, was harder than we had supposed. My long
composition was discarded, and we resolved to be content with this
simple sentence, _To the memory of Ivan_. But 'brevity is the soul of
wit,' and the TO took so long to cut, that we threw out three more
words, and the epitaph finally stood thus:

TO IVAN.

"In a rude fashion this was accomplished; and with crape on our arms
and the accustomed music we set up the stone among the lilies.

* * * * *

"In time, Ida, we grew up, as it is called. Almost before we knew it,
and whilst we still seemed to be looking forward to our emancipation