The shy gentleman had bought the St. Ulric doll at a booth under the stone archway of one of the streets of Botzen. He could not carry away with him the beautiful Austrian Tyrol, except as pictures in his own mind, and therefore he picked up the droll and ugly little St. Ulric doll.
"When I give the doll to Nelly, I will tell her about the mountain peaks where the hunters climb to shoot the chamois and the black-cock, and the valleys down toward Italy where the grapes ripen, and all about the castles perched like watch-towers along the Brenner route," thought the shy gentleman, wrapping the purchase in the bit of tissue-paper. "I must not forget to add that this Brenner Pass, where the traveller of to-day journeys on the railway from Munich to Verona, is one of the oldest highways in the world; the Etruscan merchants used to pass here, trading in iron with the Northern nations, long before the Romans."
One day a tremendous rattling was heard inside the case of the mechanical bear.
"What is the matter? Are you seasick?" inquired the lion of St. Mark.
"No," grumbled the mechanical bear. "I have been standing on my head too long, and if this voyage does not soon end, my machinery will be out of order. I shall growl at the wrong time."
"We must be gifts for children. I hope they will like us," said the St. Ulric doll.
"I hope we shall like them," said the French doll. "I come from a shop window on the Boulevard des Italiens. How can I live out of Paris!"
Just then the lid of the portmanteau was lifted, and a Custom-house officer looked in. The steamer had reached New York.
"Here he is, mamma!" cried a little girl, as a carriage paused before the door of a house on Gramercy Square.
She had been looking out of the window. Now she ran down stairs, and opened the front door. Two gentlemen got out of the carriage; one was her uncle Fred, and the other a traveller with a brown beard, whose arms were full of mysterious parcels and boxes. This was the shy gentleman, and Nelly had always found him a good friend. Soon the parcels were distributed. The mosaic box was for mother, the brass lion for Uncle Fred, and all the rest for Nelly. She was wild with delight. The Paris doll fascinated her. All her friends were invited to admire the lady from the Boulevards. Nelly could not eat, or sleep, or study her lessons. She tried on all the dresses, gloves, bonnets, and shoes.