“Won’t you be home to dinner?” they asked in despairing chorus.
“No; but Mary will take care of you, and you can enjoy yourselves; but don’t do foolish things, or your holiday will be spoiled. Now, you must all be mother to each other, that I may find you well and happy when I come home.”
For a while after she had gone, they amused themselves being mother to one another; but Willie made such a failure that they gave it up.
“Let us play with the dolls a little while,” suggested Dolly.
The proposition met with favor, and they went to the summer-house. Ada had a large family of paper dolls, and Dolly of wooden ones. They played tea party, and dinner, and visiting; but Willie could not forget that they had a holiday, and he longed to do something unusual.
“You have too many girls, Ada,” he cried. “Let us play China, and burn some up.”
A funeral pyre was soon constructed with splinters of wood, Dolly ran to the kitchen for matches, and Willie turned his jacket inside out, tied Ada’s sack about his neck by the sleeves, put the watering-pot on his head, and was ready to personate the priest. Ada selected four victims, who were securely bound with thirty cotton, and laid on the pile.
“Let us have Blackhawk for the idol,” cried Ada.
Blackhawk was brought forth, a string of colored beads put about his neck, and he was bolstered up in the arm-chair of the Princess Widdlesbee, Dolly’s largest doll. But when the match was struck and applied with a great flourish, he sprang from his throne, and fled to the farthest corner.
“The god is displeased; the sacrifice must cease,” cried Ada, who began to feel remorse as her dolls crisped and turned to ashes.