AND who do you suppose rang at the Doll Doctor’s door one Saturday.
Two noticeable personages, I assure you.
Three or four lovely phaetons were drawn up before the house; the drawing-room was open; and pretty faces, set in brown, and black, and yellow hair, and crowned with flowery hats, were looking out until every one of Miss Chatty’s windows seemed like a painting thronged with cherubs; small ladies, gloved and parasolled, and draped à la mode, were coming and going up and down the front steps; and Miss Teresa Drew was just stepping from the beautiful family carriage, that had its coachman, and its footmen, and its crested panels, and her tall French maid was behind her with a doll and a doll’s maid in her arms—but all the gay show didn’t begin to attract the attention that was universally bestowed, the moment they appeared in sight, upon the two queer little beings who came across the street, unattended and on foot, right up to Miss Chatty’s gate.
But, you see, they were gotten up in their very, very best. I am not a fashion writer, my dears, and I couldn’t begin to tell you, so that you would have a clear idea, how Miss Teresa Drew was dressed; but I must try to give you the tout ensemble of these two new children. “Tout ensemble,” my Wide Awakes, is one of those French phrases that mean so much, and are so handy, but which take so many of our English words in the translation; a little miss of my acquaintance renders it as “the all-over-ness of a person.” The costume of these children had a peculiar all-over-ness. Their shawls, a pair of ragged and worn broches, enveloped them to the throat and dragged after them; and the effect over short dresses and bare legs was striking; and the shawls, in both cases, were surmounted by old straw hats which looked, for all the world, like two much-battered toadstools.
Miss Chatty happened to see them coming up to the door, all her richly-dressed little people drawing aside to let them pass; and she dropped her order-book and made her way through her à-la-mode cherubs, and answered the door-bell herself.
“Be you the Doll Doctor, mem?” asked the elder of the children.
Miss Chatty intimated that she was.
“They told us as wot you lived here, mem, and as how you could put the wust cases together.” Opening her shawl, she drew forth a bundle, and, dropping upon one knee, undid it deftly. She was self-possessed in spite of her bare feet; but Miss Chatty was much embarrassed. The children, evidently, were street Arabs, and she hesitated, from various reasons, to ask them in among her little girls; but neither had she the heart to dismiss them; besides, she was, withal, considerably curious and amused. The hands busy with the bundle were very hard, and very tanned; the face, all intent upon the knot of the string, was strangely quaint and mature,—indeed, the utter absence of childish timidity and embarrassment was perhaps the chief reason why Miss Chatty hesitated, with such a dear, funny, soft-hearted manner, in her treatment of these new patrons.
Finally the knot was untied. A couple of dolls’ heads were displayed, very much curtailed as to nose, badly rubbed as to their black china curls, and sadly crackled as to their cheeks, as cheeks will after long painting.