‘Here is my rocking horse,’ said she, patting a shabby gray pony, who had lost most of his tail, but whose eyes still glistened brown and bright. ‘His name is Dapple Gray. And here are three of my children. They live in this shoe-box. Their names are Dora and Nora and Flora, and no one can tell them apart but me.’
Dora and Nora and Flora were three little black-haired dolls with china heads and sawdust bodies. One was dressed in pink, and one in blue, and one in green. They sat in a stiff row and smiled sweetly up at Sally and Alice with their tiny red mouths. They all had shining, black eyes and round, red cheeks and black boots painted on their china feet.
‘They look just alike to me,’ said Alice. ‘I don’t see how you ever know them apart.’
‘I will tell you,’ answered Sally, ‘only remember it is a secret.’
She leaned forward and spoke softly in Alice’s ear.
‘I know them by their clothes,’ whispered Sally. ‘Dora wears pink, and Nora wears blue, and Flora wears green. Isn’t that easy? Now come and see my other dolls. They are asleep in the cradle.’
Sally led the way to a low, old-fashioned wooden cradle, quite large enough to hold a real baby or two, and with a push set it swinging sleepily to and fro.
‘It is a really-truly cradle,’ explained Sally with a nod of her head. ‘It was mine, and it was Mother’s, and it was Grandmother’s, too. But I use it for my dolls because we have no baby who needs it now.’
‘We have no baby, either,’ volunteered Alice, ‘only Mother and me.’
‘This is Nancy Lee,’ went on Sally, lifting from the cradle a doll dressed in a white middy blouse and dark blue bloomers. ‘She is made of wood. Captain Ball down the street made her. He has a little shop. See, she can bend her arms and legs, and she will never, never break.’