If all goes well, the eyes and the wig come next. The eyes are not made in this factory at all. They come from Germany, and it would probably give you a queer, scared feeling to see the making of them. Look into this long, dark room, and when your eyes are a little used to the strange shadowiness, you will see that down its sides there are rows of tables, before each of which sits a woman with a blue-flame gas lamp in front of her. At little distances are retorts of glowing molten glass, and each woman dips her short glass tube into the melted glass, and, keeping it soft by the help of that weird blue flame of the blowpipe jet, blows a little oblong globe which she colors white for the eyeball, and then upon it paints a pupil of blue, brown, or black, as the doll-makers may have ordered. The musical click which you hear all the time is the sharp stroke which breaks the finished and cooled eye from the glass rod, letting it drop into a box lined with cotton by her side. This boy coming out has been collecting them, and it makes us shiver to see those hundreds of eyes rolling uncannily at us from the bottom of his basket. Come away! A wig for an inexpensive doll is an easy matter; the chosen strands of hair are laid along a double thread, which passes below one strand and above the next. This thread makes the “part,” and under it is stuck a bit of pasteboard by which the wig is fastened on. A quick-fingered French woman can turn out over a hundred dozen such wigs in a day. And with the wig dolly is made at last. Her clothes, of course, are a separate matter, just as yours are; there are dolls’ shoemakers, and dolls’ dressmakers, and the elaborate completeness of dolly’s outfit depends only upon the price one is willing to pay. [Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York_ WIG-MAKING] Irina’s Day on the Estates Irina is a Russian who answers promptly if you ask her what Christmas she remembers best, “The one we spent on the estates.” But that may be because it was so unusual to be there at all in the winter. Christmas Eve is the great time in Russia, but Santa Claus does not come until evening and the day before Christmas being a fast-day is usually somewhat depressing. Old Mashinka, who comes in to open the heavy, outer shutters, usually has some lively gossip to tell while she lets in the light. Perhaps wolves slipped into the courtyard in the night and were fighting with the watch-dogs; perhaps the snow has fallen again and is so deep that Ivan and the stablemen have been out since daybreak cutting new paths to the kitchens, stables, and farm buildings, and breaking out the roads. Or perhaps Dmitri, who moved yesterday into a new house, took with him a cock and hen, and this morning the cock refused to crow at dawn so that all the family are sure that evil fortune will enter the house with the new year. But on this morning she has no news to tell; she moves silently and slowly, for it is a fast-day.