The rain spattered in her face, and on her bald head and in a very short time her dress became soaked. Suddenly a great gust of wind came around the corner, and before Dorothy realized it she was blown from her place and down she fell in the garden prone on her face. Then she fainted, and did not know anything for a long time.
When she recovered she was surprised to find that she was not in the garden, but in a strange beautiful place. It looked like the hall of a magnificent castle with beautiful pictures and elegant surroundings. On a throne, at one end of the hall, sat the most beautiful doll in the world. She was tall and stately, and in her right hand carried a golden wand.
But the strangest sight of all was a single file of dolls, the most wretched, forlorn-looking things that Dorothy had ever seen.
Standing one behind the other the line extended from the throne of the beautiful doll away down the hall as far as the eye could see. Dorothy was the fifth in the line, and she knew that she looked as badly as anybody, but as she was watching the queen of the dolls she forgot about her looks. Just then the first doll in the line limped up to the throne and stood before the queen.
“My poor subject,” said the queen, in a sweet, gentle voice, “how came thee, who left this house bright and beautiful, in this sad plight? Tell thy sad story.”
“Alas!” said the poor doll, who had only one eye, one arm and half a kid leg, “a little girl, who was a most careless mistress, let me fall so often that I was completely undone and my beauty destroyed.”
The doll bowed her head and the queen touched it with her golden wand, saying:—“Arise, my child, and be as perfect as thou should’st,” and immediately the doll, who had looked so badly before, arose whole and beautiful. She bowed low to the queen and left the throne.
Dorothy saw many beautiful dolls, waiting on the other side of the hall. They ran up and kissed the doll who had been made beautiful and she walked away with them. But the second doll in the line was already before the queen telling her story, and Dorothy listened to every word.
She was a china doll and looked something like Kathleen; she said with sobs:
“At first my mistress was very kind to me. She rocked me to sleep every night, dressed me in silken frocks in the afternoon and took me out to ride in a beautiful doll’s-carriage. After awhile she did not care for me at all, and one day when I fell out of the carriage, her little dog Fido caught me in his teeth and shook me so badly that I never quite recovered from the shock, in fact I was all broken up.”