“Why,” said Betty, “that’s the tune the nice man with the wooden leg on Tuesdays and Fridays always played.”
And what do you think it was? It was “Home, sweet Home.”
THE MISS BANNISTERS’
BROTHER
THE MISS BANNISTERS’
BROTHER
I
Christina’s father was as good as his word—the doll came, by post, in a long wooden box, only three days after he had left for Paris. All the best dolls come from Paris, but you have to call them “poupées” there when you ask the young ladies in the shops for them.
Christina had been in the garden ever since she got up, waiting for the postman—there was a little gap in the trees where you could see him coming up the road—and she and Roy had run to meet him across the hay-field directly they spied him in the distance. Running across the hay-field was forbidden until after hay-making; but when a doll is expected from Paris...!
Christina’s father was better than his word, for it was the most beautiful doll ever made, with a whole wardrobe of clothes, too.
Also a tiny tortoiseshell comb and a powder puff. Also an extra pair of bronzed boots. Her eyes opened and shut, and even her eyebrows were real hair. This, as you know, is unusual in dolls, their hair, as a rule, being made of other materials and far too yellow, and their eyebrows being just paint. “She shall be called Diana,” said Christina, who had always loved the name from afar.
Christina took Diana to her mother at once, Roy running behind her with the box and the brown paper and the string and the wardrobe, and Chrissie calling back every minute, “Don’t drop the powder puff whatever you do!” “Hold tight to the hand-glass!” and things like that.