Dinah was complete save for her shoes, which were already cut from a pair of old kid gloves, and her name. I remember her creator wished to call her Lillian, but with all the wisdom of my five full-fledged years well to the fore, I suggested that it would be well for all of us to leave the christening to Miss Marie, herself. And she of thirty-five years bent her head to my five, and the name of Lillian floated back to the limbo from which it had been so briefly called. As the second shoe was taken up, Marie showed signs of waking, and the newly created one was thrust into my hands, and I was told to go and give it to the little tot. But deep down in my soul I said, “Nay! Nay!” for mark you, I was a canny child, and ten years of life’s experiences had been crowded into my five of actual time, and hell and bitter punishments took prominent places in the religion thus far made known to me. I said to myself therefore: “This child is wicked, for all she is so pretty, she’s awful, and if for her punishment she is to be frightened to death by the sight of this nameless thing, I don’t intend to be the instrument used in her undoing!” So, swiftly I crept to the great crib-bed, and in a moment crept away again, leaving across her stomach, like a hideous nightmare, that “deed without a name,” and then I fled to the hall and waited for things, behind the partly open door; wondering which of the little cups and glasses on a stand by the bed, holding cooling drinks, would strike the door first. I waited and watched. Marie’s eyes opened, a scowl instantly darkened her face; in a querulous tone she asked, “Is my mamma, home, now?”
The voice of the sempstress answered gently, “No, dear,” and a light like sunshine came into her brilliant eyes; she smiled sweetly and asked, “Where’s my Cawie?” her name for me, and as near as she could get to Carrie, and then she felt the weight across her, and the moment had come!
She lifted the thing, and they were face to face. The child’s eyes opened wider and wider, the pupils dilated, the lids flickered nervously, then came a faint, long-drawn “Oh—h—h!” another pause, broken at last by the announcement, calmly and gravely made, “She eyes, don’t fit each other!”
Marie had trouble with her personal pronouns, as well as with her relatives.
Next moment she rolled over and began to scramble into a sitting posture, during which she all unconsciously pressed the doll tightly against her little chest. (Oh, for us, happy accident!) for the next instant, with a shout of surprise and joy, she cried, “Oh, she cuddles, she cuddles!”
Two words which were to become familiar to every member of the family, in the time to come, “She cuddles, and she is Dinah, my peshous! Dinah, always!”
And she who had thought of Lillian rashly exclaimed, “But why on earth, Dinah?”
And received for answer, “Caus’, I say so, and caus’ my mamma jess hates the Dinah song.” A so-called “comic,” named “Wilkins and Dinah” that Mrs. Tyler raged at when her young brother used to sing it within her hearing.
So it was pure malice that prompted “Tyler’s little vixen” to name her new treasure “Dinah”! Then following that rule of action familiar to all small girls with dolls since before the building of the temple, she turned Dinah upside down, that she might know quantity, quality, and condition of her undergarments, and when she found that Dinah possessed that final charm, that very crown of happy dolldom, the ability to have her clothes put on and off, to be dressed and undressed at will, the measure was full, her joy complete.
She turned her Dinah right side up again and kissed her fondly. At that sight my short legs basely betrayed me, and I sat down with unnecessary emphasis the deaf might have heard. Instantly the cry arose: “You, Cawie, Cawie, come here and see my ‘peshous Dinah’!”