THE DOLL’S PARADISE.
It was a very wet day and Dorothy could not go out, so she went to her
own little playroom to have a good time with her dolls. Susan Ida was
a large wax doll with black eyes and golden hair, that is to say, she
had golden hair when Santa Claus brought her, but owing to an accident
this beautiful hair, which should have been hanging down her back, was
suspended from a hook in the closet.
I am sorry to say Susan Ida was bald.
Kathleen had once been a handsome china doll with black wavy hair
parted right in the middle, but, alas! Kathleen was a cripple for the
rest of her doll existence, having lost both legs.
Dinah was a lovely colored baby, but somehow she had lost an arm and
had one eye knocked out, while Jessop, who was a clown-doll with bells
in his cap, had a broken nose and wore very ragged clothes. Dorothy set
them all in a row and looked at them with a frown on her sunny face.
“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!
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.”
Truly it was a sad story and Dorothy felt sorry for the poor china
doll. The golden wand touched her and she became very lovely, and went
to the other side with her happy companions.
Now the third doll in the line was the most disreputable-looking one
that Dorothy had ever seen. She was a wax doll with just one spear of
hair on the top of her head. Her nose was broken and her front teeth
knocked out. She did not have on even a doll’s chemise, and worse than
all there was a great hole in her back. Dorothy had been looking at a
group of lovely dolls at the other side of the hall who were eating
ice-cream when her attention was called by a very familiar name.
“I was a beautiful French doll,” said the third. “I had been well
educated and people said that I knew how to talk, I must admit that
I was clever and knew when to shut my eyes. My name was Fanchette”
(Dorothy gave a start at this name). “Well,” continued Fanchette, “to
make a long story short, bad treatment soon reduced me to my present
condition, this dreadful hole in my back was made by my cruel little
mistress, she said she wanted to see what was inside of me. After that
I was cast aside until one day a housemaid threw me into an ash-barrel,
which occasioned my death.”
This story was strangely interesting to Dorothy and she watched
eagerly to see what the doll would be like when the wand touched her.
Imagine Dorothy’s surprise to see her own Fanchette, that Uncle John
had brought her from Paris a long time ago. Dorothy could hardly
believe her eyes, but there stood Fanchette as dainty and beautiful as
ever. She was just going to cry out “Fanchette,” but No. 4 was talking
and as she came next she was very attentive. No. 4 was a boy doll.
He wore a worsted jacket and said he was German. He did not have any
broken limbs, but seemed very much shrunken. He had fallen into a tub
of water, he said, and had been drowned. When the queen touched him he
went off smiling and happy with some other boy dolls.
Now it was Dorothy’s turn, how she got up to the throne she did not
know. She thought of her poor bald head and her sad appearance.
“Excuse me,” said Dorothy, “I haven’t a leg to stand on.”
The queen smiled sadly at her and then arose from the throne tall and
beautiful, saying:--
“I cannot hear any more sad stories to-day, but you may all file up
and I will make you beautiful.” She touched Dorothy lightly on the
head with the golden wand and the little girl became her own dear self
again. She felt so happy she wanted to jump for very joy. She ran off
with some beautiful dolls, her brown curls brushing her smiling face
and her eyes sparkling with merriment. Down the beautiful hall she
tripped and just as she reached the door that led into a golden room,
she looked back. The queen was just in the act of touching the last one
of the poor broken dolls. Dorothy entered the golden room and found
herself amid a scene of fairy splendor with the beautifullest dolls in
the world.
There were big dolls and little dolls, dolls in silks and satins, and
sweet tidy dolls in cap and apron who were maids to wait upon them.
Some dainty little dolls were dancing with handsome boy-dolls, and
others were sitting about in groups laughing and talking. Dorothy
passed through the golden room and out into a garden. Here there were
more dolls, some of them swinging in snug little doll-hammocks, others
were gathering flowers, and on a fine stretch of lawn was the dearest
little party playing croquet. Dorothy walked through the garden and
came to a pond. There were pretty boats on it and a little doll man,
dressed like a sailor, stepped up and touched his cap, at the same time
asking Dorothy if she would take a sail.
“With pleasure, thank you,” answered Dorothy and she stepped into a
boat and began to sail around the pond. She was so happy and felt so
comfortable that she just fell back on the soft cushions of the boat
and closed her eyes. It was all so soft and dreamy that she drifted
into a sound sleep. When she awoke where do you think she found
herself?