“I’m really ashamed of you all,” said Dorothy, “you look so badly with your old torn clothes, and I am sure if you did not play so roughly you wouldn’t break your noses and things. One would think that you were all foot-ball players,” she continued. The dolls looked very sorry, all except Jessop. He had a smile on his face. “You needn’t smile, Jessop,” said Dorothy. “As for you, Susan Ida, I’m just going to whip you, because you are such a big doll you ought to know better,” and she shook her finger at her largest dolly. She was just going to take Susan Ida across her knee when she heard the queerest little “squeak, squeak,” right behind her. Dorothy turned to see who made the sound, and just as she did the door of her play-room opened and there stood the dearest little doll with coal black curls and coral-pink cheeks.
All at once the strange doll began to grow larger and larger until she towered over everything in the room and was the greatest doll Dorothy had ever seen. Then she did a strange thing. She walked slowly to the place where Dorothy was sitting. She raised her hands and drew them lightly over Dorothy’s face, arms and legs, in fact over her entire body, and a most wonderful thing happened. Dorothy felt herself becoming hard and rigid in every joint. The stranger had turned little Dorothy into a wax doll. At first she thought it rather nice to be a doll, but when she tried to stand and found that she could not she did not like it very well. She had also grown very much smaller, and was not any larger than one of her own dolls, but she knew everything that was going on around her. The strange doll, who had done such a wonderful thing to Dorothy, began to skip around the room and laugh and sing. She didn’t seem to be a doll any longer, but was just like a little girl.
Dorothy watched her hopping about. “O dear me,” sighed Dorothy almost in terror, “I do hope she won’t jump on me,” but no sooner did the thought come to her, when plump came the stranger right on Dorothy’s legs.
“Well, I declare,” said the strange doll-girl lightly, “you are always getting in my way,” and she continued to skip about the room.
“O my poor feet!” said Dorothy to herself, and all at once she saw that both her legs below the knees had been broken off. “I wish I could scream,” sighed Dorothy, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not open her mouth.
All of a sudden the strange doll-girl stopped jumping and said to Dorothy, “You bad doll, you’ve lost a leg.”
Dorothy was just going to say “Two of them,” when she was caught up by the stranger, and got a terrible shaking. Then she fell in a heap on the floor, feeling utterly wretched. After a while the stranger said, “Now you must sit up and let me braid your hair.”
Dorothy’s hair hung in soft curls and she did not like the idea of having it braided. But of course she could not say anything and had to submit to another rough handling. This proved to be the hardest trial yet, because no sooner did the combing begin than the pulling was almost unbearable. Suddenly the doll-girl got very angry. “I never saw such snarls,” she cried, and caught poor Dorothy by the hair of the head and dragged her around the room. In a few moments her hair came off and she was as bald as Susan Ida.
“Alas!” said poor little Dorothy, “I shall be lame and bald and nobody cares.” She tried to cry, but even that consolation was denied her.
The stranger who had done these dreadful things was looking out of the window, calmly watching the rain, when suddenly she turned and said, “Would you like to look out of the window, I think it would do you good?” She took Dorothy by one poor limp arm and carried her across the room to the window. After she dangled Dorothy a while by one arm she raised the window and put her outside in the rain, saying, “Out there you can get cooled off.” She skipped around the room again clapping her hands and having a good time. Poor little Dorothy outside the window, as frightened as could be, but unable to stir an inch!