“That’s fine!” exclaimed April. “We’ve had an awful time about opium. Last year it rained just at the wrong time and our rows of poppies had very few flowers on them. We have been very short of it since.” “And it’s a dreadfully sticky task to get the opium,” Harriot explained, twisting up her face. “We have to pick the poppy heads when they’re ripe and pierce them with a coarse needle. Then we have to catch the gum in a cup and let it dry. We’re hoping to get a lot this summer.” Meanwhile, as they talked, the unpacking went on, and presently April held up a beautiful French doll of huge proportions. “Is this for little Harriot?” she asked, with a teasing grin at her younger sister who had never, even in her younger days, had any taste for dolls. “That’s one of the things I was most disappointed about,” Dorothea answered. “I just longed for the examining officer to find that, and I had made up my mind to tell him it was for my little Cousin Harriot; but he never noticed it.” “It’s very pretty,” Harriot remarked coldly, “but I’m a trifle too old for dolls.” “Not for this one,” Dorothea cried. “It’s stuffed with ground coffee and quinine pills.” “Then I’d be glad to have it,” Harriot shouted, ready to laugh at herself. “Give it to me, April.” “No, no!” her sister replied, retreating across the room. “Dorothea didn’t say she brought it for you. She said she was _going_ to _say_ that. However, you can have the pills, if you want them. They’re fine and bitter, worse than any dog-wood berry ones you ever tasted.” “I’ll have some of the coffee, too,” Harriot insisted. “Oh, just imagine a cup of real coffee! I believe I’ve forgotten what it tastes like. But, Dorothea, how did you ever think of such a thing as stuffing a doll with coffee?” “It wasn’t my own idea at all,” Dorothea confessed. “Some years ago, when father and I were traveling on the Continent, we saw a woman who tried the same trick in one of the custom houses. I can still remember my horror when the officer who was examining her luggage picked up a perfectly beautiful doll, all dressed in flowered silk, and deliberately snapped off its head, in spite of the fact that she told him it was for her brother’s little girl who was ill. But I was more astonished when the man drew out yards and yards of the finest lace which was concealed in the doll’s body. That’s what gave me the idea.” “Such are the advantages of travel,” said April quizzically. “It must be great fun to go everywhere,” Harriot put in half enviously. “Nobody I know ever went any farther than New Orleans or the White Sulphur. I’ve only been to the plantation and back, and that wasn’t even out of Georgia. I certainly should like to travel in Europe, wouldn’t you, April?” “Indeed I should,” her sister agreed. “You are quite to be envied, Dorothea.”