“Push the arm-chair away,” I commanded; “very slowly, so that no one will know it is being moved.”
So they moved it away—very, very slowly and no one saw that it had stirred. But the next minute the little girl Princess gave a delightful start.
“Oh! what is that!” she cried out, hurrying towards the unfashionable neighborhood behind the door.
Cynthia blushed all over and the nurse actually turned pale. The Racketty-Packettys tumbled down in a heap beneath their window and began to say their prayers very fast.
“It is only a shabby old doll’s house, your Highness,” Cynthia stammered out. “It belonged to my Grandmamma, and it ought not to be in the nursery. I thought you had had it burned, Nurse!”
“Burned!” the little girl Princess cried out in the most shocked way. “Why if it was mine, I wouldn’t have it burned for worlds! Oh! please push the chair away and let me look at it. There are no doll’s houses like it anywhere in these days.” And when the arm-chair was pushed aside she scrambled down on to her knees just as if she was not a little girl Princess at all.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” she said. “How funny and dear! What a darling old doll’s house. It is shabby and wants mending, of course, but it is almost exactly like one my Grandmamma had—she kept it among her treasures and only let me look at it as a great, great treat.”
Cynthia gave a gasp, for the little girl Princess’s Grandmamma had been the Queen and people had knelt down and kissed her hand and had been obliged to go out of the room backwards before her.
The little girl Princess was simply filled with joy. She picked up Meg and Peg and Kilmanskeg and Gustibus and Peter Piper as if they had been really a Queen’s dolls.
“Oh! the darling dears,” she said. “Look at their nice, queer faces and their funny clothes. Just—just like Grandmamma’s dollies’ clothes. Only these poor things do so want new ones. Oh! how I should like to dress them again just as they used to be dressed, and have the house all made just as it used to be when it was new.”