"
Ethelbertha was very young--ridiculously young, as I think I have
mentioned before--in those days of which I am writing, and the love of
dolls, and of the gorgeous dresses that dolls wear, and of the
many-windowed but inconveniently arranged houses that dolls inhabit--or
are supposed to inhabit, for as a rule they seem to prefer sitting on the
roof with their legs dangling down over the front door, which has always
appeared to me to 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.
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