In five minutes more I was in the street, with Bella in a basket on my arm. Her little mother had covered her carefully from the cold, though it was already May; and I felt as if I were in a position of grave responsibility as I hurried to the dolls’ hospital.
A bell rang when I opened the door, and the oddest little person stood before me. At first I thought it was a child masquerading in long clothes; for she was not more than half the height of an ordinary woman.
But, looking more closely, I saw the maturity of her face, and realized that I stood in the presence of a grown-up dwarf, who might really have been taken for Dickens’s Miss Mowcher, herself.
She was dressed in a long, straight gown of rusty-looking black alpaca, and her rusty-looking black hair was drawn straightly back from as plain a face as one often sees. It was a kind, honest face, however, and I liked the voice in which she asked how she could serve me. I explained my errand.
“Please to let me see the patient.”
She spoke with as much gravity as if she had been the superintending physician of the largest hospital in London. I unveiled poor Bella, and the dwarf lifted her from the basket with grave tenderness.
“Poor little beauty!” she said. “Yes’m, I think I can cure her.”
“Will the operation take long?” I asked, humoring her fancy.
“I should prefer that the patient should not be moved, ma’am, before to-morrow.”