One Saturday afternoon, Lina was playing with her dolls in the baby house, with two of her little neighbors, Minnie and Maggie Elliott, to keep her company. It was a dark, rainy sort of day; but what difference did that make to the children? They never wanted to make a parcel of stupid morning calls, or go out shopping and spend all their money on silly finery; no—they were full of their play in the house, and didn't care a doll's shoe-string how hard it rained.
"Oh, dear!" said Lina at last; "seems to me this play is getting very stupid! I wish we knew something else to play at but everlasting 'house!'"
"I'll tell you what would be great fun!" said little Minnie, looking wise. "You know, Lina, we spent a week once in the country with 'Alice Nightcaps;' and her sister, 'Aunt Fanny's' daughter, showed us such a nice, funny play! Instead of our being mothers, and aunts, and fathers, and the dolls our children, the dolls were all the people themselves, and we moved them about and spoke for them."
"Yes, it was such a nice plan!" said Maggie; "you can't think, Lina. Suppose we divide these dolls into families, and play that Miss Isabella Belmont Montague was going to be married, and all about it."
"Oh, yes! yes! that will be splendid!" cried Lina. "Whom will you manage, Maggie?"
"I'd rather have Miss Isabella," said Maggie.
"And I want Mr. Morris," said Minnie. "He shall be the lover."
"Very well, then I'll make the father and mother talk," said Lina, generously taking the less splendid dolls, without a word of mean complaint, such as "There, you hateful thing, you always want the best;" or, "I do wish I could do as I like with my own dolls!" forgetting that company must be allowed to take the best always. The other dolls were equally divided between the children, and then Lina exclaimed, with a delighted little skip in the air, "Now, we are all ready to begin! Come, girls, what time shall it be?"
"Oh, have them at breakfast!" chimed both the little visitors; and so, in defiance of the parlor clock, the time of day was supposed to be eight in the morning. The children, with many little chuckling pauses, while they considered what to do next, twitched the unlucky table cloth straight, put the tea-set on the table, and gave the family a wooden beefsteak for breakfast, and a large plateful of wooden buttered toast, which came from a box full of such indigestible dainties. Then they fished Mr. Charles Augustus Montague out of the corner, and set him upright in a chair at the head of the table, with his newspaper fastened in his hands, by having a couple of large pins stuck through it and them. The points of the pins showed on the other side, and looked as if he had a few extra finger nails growing on the backs of his hands. Quite a curiosity he'd have been for Barnum's Museum, wouldn't he? you precious little old toad.
Mrs. Montague was seated behind the tea-tray, and Miss Isabella was reclining on a sofa up stairs, as if she was too lazy to come down when the rest of the family did. As the front door was only large enough for the dolls, the whole back of the house came away. Lina and her visitors delightedly sat down cross-legged on the floor behind it, and the play began, the children talking for the dolls.