They looked so funny, that mamma told them she ought to do with them as did an old lady that she once heard of, who allowed her children to play near a little stream which ran by their home. When they fell in she hung them on a line and fastened them with clothes-pins, stuck through their toes. It was so odd to see them hanging in a row—ten of them! When they were dry she took them in, sprinkled and ironed them, and let them loose again. They were hung so low it really didn’t hurt them, and they thought it great fun. One day she left them hanging while she went to the store, and a thunder shower came up. She rushed home in a panic and, of course, found them dripping. She took out the clothes-pins, shooed them into the house like a brood of chickens, gave them each some ginger tea and hustled them into bed, piling blankets upon them till they were nearly smothered. They recovered, of course.
“And now,” said mamma, “we must get dressed and go to dinner.”
They all had a hearty laugh over this remarkable tale, and thought mamma would have to have a great many clothes-pins and a very long line upon which to hang them.
The dolls ate a hearty dinner
When all were ready they walked up to the hotel, where the guests were eagerly waiting for them. They had seen the telegram which ordered dinner to be prepared for thirty mothers, thirty children and thirty live dolls, and they watched with the greatest interest the little girls, each with a doll by her side, march into the dining-room. How astonished they were when they saw the dolls eat—actually put food into their mouths and swallow it. That was the strangest thing! The dolls weren’t a bit embarrassed, however, and ate a hearty dinner and enjoyed it, too, for the long ride and the bathing had given them fine appetites.
After it was over they filed out, and the guests after them. The grown people begged the mothers to tell them what it all meant, and their children surrounded the little girls and their dolls. Of course, the story that they heard was very strange and hard to believe, but they could see this part of it with their own eyes, and so could not but believe the rest.