“Oh, have you got a long-clothes baby?” asked Peggy, clasping her two hands together.
Mrs. Emma said that she had, and Peggy begged her to let her go down and bathe it for her.
The policeman doll said he didn’t think he could allow that without orders, but Mrs. Emma persuaded him, and he said that as the outer door of the house was locked, perhaps it wouldn’t much matter after all; only she wasn’t to tell anybody. Peggy would have promised almost anything for the sake of bathing a real live baby doll, and promised this readily enough. So she left the four dolls, promising to come back soon, and went downstairs with Mr. and Mrs. Emma.
They lived in the basement, where they had a large and well furnished kitchen, spotlessly clean. In one corner of it was a pretty bassinette covered with muslin and ribbons, and inside it was the sweetest little baby doll, beautifully dressed in a hand-made robe of cambric and lace. Everything was so pretty and dainty that it might have belonged to a princess, and Mrs. Emma told Peggy that she took a great pride in having everything very nice for her baby.
Peggy lost her heart to the baby doll at once. She would have loved it even if it had been just like other dolls, but when it smiled at her, and put out its little pudgy hands, and gurgled happily, she could almost have eaten it, it was so fascinating.
Peggy lost her heart to the baby doll
Mrs. Emma put on her a large bath apron, and got out a white enamelled toy bath, with a gold rim round it, and a cake of pink soap, and filled the bath with hot water. And then Peggy lifted the baby doll carefully out of the cot and undressed it and put it into the bath, first putting her own hand in the water to see that it was not too hot.
It was lovely, bathing that beautiful fat laughing baby doll. Mrs. Emma stood over the bath smiling at them both, but she soon saw that Peggy knew exactly what to do and how to do it, so she went away to her work in another part of the kitchen.
Peggy was so busy with the baby doll, and so wrapped up in it, that she did not pay much attention to what Mr. and Mrs. Emma were talking about. But she heard some of the things they said, and, although she did not pay much attention to them at the time, as I have said, they turned out to be important afterwards, as you will see.