"Look what I have!" whispered Arnold, showing the Bold Tin Soldier.
"Why did you bring him?" Dick wanted to know.
"So if we don't like the games the girls play we can go off in a room by ourselves and have fun with my Soldier," was the answer. "But maybe we'll have some fun, anyhow."
"Let me hold your Soldier for a while," begged Dick, and Arnold handed over the Captain.
After a while the little boys went back to where the other children were and all began to play games. Madeline set her Candy Rabbit on the table near Dorothy's Sawdust Doll, and the two toys looked at each other.
All sorts of games were played. One was "hide the thimble," and when it was Madeline's turn to hide it she put it right between the front legs of her Candy Rabbit as he sat on the table. Not one of the boys or girls thought of looking there for it, so they had to give up, and it was Madeline's turn to hide it again.
This time she put the thimble on top of the head of Dorothy's Sawdust Doll, who had on a new blue ribbon in honor of the party.
It was a gold thimble that the children were playing with, and the Sawdust Doll, catching sight of her reflection in the glass over one of the pictures in the room, noted this fact.
"That golden gleam against the blue of my ribbon is certainly very pretty and becoming," she thought. "I hope Dorothy will notice it and will get a gold ornament for my hair. I like to be a toy, but sometimes it is a great nuisance not to be able to tell your little girl and boy parents what you would like to have them do."
All this time the children were hunting for the thimble, and, though it was in plain sight, it was not until some time afterward that Mirabell saw it.