DRESSING DOLLS.
Even if girls are as tall as their mothers they have a deep, if
unconfessed, interest in dolls; so Mrs. Abbott’s girls responded very
willingly to an appeal from a mission school in New York for fifty
dolls’ costumes. A toy merchant of benevolent disposition had presented
the mission with two hundred unclad dolls, and the dressing of all but
fifty were provided for. Mrs. Abbott advised taking only twenty-five,
but her scholars insisted on the whole number. A very large box of
silks, satins, cashmeres, and other gatherings from kindly disposed
milliners and dress-makers accompanied the dolls, and the spare room
was turned into a workshop and the spare bed into a depository for
dolls in every stage of dressing. As fast as each one was fully dressed
it was laid tenderly away in a bureau drawer.
Miss Blake and Mrs. Abbott helped the younger girls, who sewed the
garments after they were cut out. But all who had skill enough to
do it dressed the dolls without assistance, and costumed them very
much as they pleased; so there was a great variety. There were German
peasants, Roman and Breton peasants, sailor girls and boys, infants
and fine ladies, grandmothers and French nurses, Scotch lassies and
coal-black Dinahs. But each doll, whether she resembled a princess or
peasant, had clothes that would come off and go on, and the sewing was
carefully done and the button-holes were highly commendable.
The dolls were to be given at Christmas to poor children who might
learn some lessons of neatness and propriety from the well-made,
well-adjusted clothes, and, as Mrs. Abbott said, “What is worth doing
at all is worth doing well;” so there was no slighting, or what Marion
expressively called “cobbling.”
The day scholars came afternoons to help, and really the task of
dressing the fifty dolls was lighter than it sounds, and Mrs. Abbott
admitted that the girls knew better than she did when they carried the
point of speaking for fifty instead of twenty-five.
There was a strange lack of ribbons among the scraps and gleanings that
came in the box of materials, and as it is a well-known fact that some
costumes are barren and incomplete without sashes, shoulder-knots, and
such adornments, it seemed to the busy girls that even the plainest of
the dolls needed some finishing touches that only ribbons could give.
Delia Howland proposed taking up a penny collection, as they sometimes
did to buy popping corn; but some mental calculation showed that even
if the appeal met a favorable response in every case thirty cents would
be the sum total of the collection, and that would go only a lamentably
small way in ribbons.
After some discussion an improvement was made on the plan, and scholars
and teachers were visited by a committee of two, who presented a neatly
written sheet stating the case thus:
“Know all ladies and girls by these presents, that in this comfortable
and well-arranged house fifty small but beauteous creatures are
suffering for the want of ribbon. Many of the sufferers have not been
seen to smile since their destitution became apparent. Others are cold
and rigid in their stony despair.
“Sisters, shall such things be?
“Give, sisters, give of your abundance.
“Donations of money in sums not less than five and not more than
twenty-five cents are respectfully solicited by the committee, who
pledge themselves to see that the offerings are not squandered for any
purpose but the one mentioned.
“N. B.--A small tin bank will be placed upon the hall table, and people
who wish to give more than the largest sum mentioned above are at
liberty to drop coin in.
“N. B.--Buttons or broken sleeve-links dropped in the bank will be
traced to their source by experienced experts, and humiliation will
follow.”
This high-sounding document proved very efficacious, and Bell Burgoyne
and Fannie Holmes, the anonymous committee, found themselves in
possession of five dollars from the collection and two dollars which
were revealed by the opening of the little tin bank.
That was an unnecessarily large sum to spend for ribbon, Miss Blake
said, and proposed that the boxing and expressing back of the dressed
dolls should be paid out of it, and if any were still left after the
purchases were judiciously made it should be deposited in the tin bank
as a nest-egg, not for a rainy day, but for a day when Mrs. Abbott’s
brother should come, as he had promised to make her a visit, and tell
them stories that would, as Lily had said once, wring their hearts,
and their purses, too, and make them long to give even a trifle of help
to the unhappy creatures he told them of, whose only crime was their
being girls.
For Mr. Eaton was a returned missionary, laid aside from his work, long
before years or failing health had enfeebled him, by an accident which
had nearly destroyed his sight. He was intending to spend the Christmas
holidays with his sister, and the girls, who remembered his visit of
last year with pleasure, were glad to know that they should find him at
school when they returned from their two-weeks’ vacation.
Edna shrugged her shoulders when she heard the others rejoicing at the
prospect of having this minister in the house.
“You’re a queer lot, here,” she said. “Now, at Madame de Lanay’s all
the girls thought ministers were horrid, stiff, solemn things, looking
shocked if any one laughed and all the time poking texts at people.
Goodness! It makes me low-spirited just to think of being in the house
with one of the walking funerals.”
“Walking funerals!” and Delia Howland burst into shrieks of laughter.
“Why, Edna, my father’s a minister, and he is the liveliest, jolliest
man I ever saw.”
“Well, I’m sure I beg your pardon, Del, for not remembering there was
a minister’s daughter present, and I’m sure it’s very nice in you to
think so much of your father.”
“Yes, it's very obliging of her,” said Lily, dryly; “but Delia’s father,
nice as he is, is not the only cheerful minister. You will have to
change your mind, if you think they are all a mournful lot, when you
see Mr. Eaton. He has had sorrow upon sorrow, Mrs. Abbott says, and yet
he is so cheerful that he brightens up the whole house.”