"'I have not made you a night-dress, my love,' Rosa continued; 'I am
not fond of my needle you know. _You_ were not fond of your needle, I
think. I fear you must go to bed in your clothes, my dear.'
"'You are very kind,' I said, 'but I am not tired, and--it would not
bear my weight.'
"'Pooh! pooh!' said Rosa. 'My love! I remember passing one Sunday in
it with the rag-doll, and the Dowager, and the Punch and Judy (the
amount of pillow their two noses took up I shall never forget!), and
the old doll that had nothing on, because her clothes were in the
dolls' wash and did not get ironed on Saturday night, and the
Highlander, whose things wouldn't come off, and who slept in his kilt.
Not bear you? Nonsense! You must go to bed, my dear. I've got other
things to do, and I can't leave you lying about.'
"'The whole lot of you did not weigh one quarter of what I do,' I
cried desperately. 'I cannot, and will not get into that bed; I should
break it all to pieces, and hurt myself into the bargain.'
"'Well, if you will not go to bed, I must put you there,' said Rosa,
and without more ado, she snatched me up in her kid arms, and laid me
down.
"Of course it was just as I expected. I had hardly touched the two little
pillows (they had a meal-baggy smell from being stuffed with bran), when
the woodwork gave way with a crash, and I fell--fell--fell--
"Though I fully believed every bone in my body to be broken, it was
really a relief to get to the ground. As soon as I could, I sat up,
and felt myself all over. A little stiff, but, as it seemed, unhurt.
Oddly enough, I found that I was back again under the tree; and more
strange still, it was not the tree where I sat with Rosa, but the old
oak-tree in the little wood. Was it all a dream? The toys had
vanished, the lights were out, the mosses looked dull in the growing
dusk, the evening was chilly, the hole no larger than it was thirty
years ago, and when I felt in my pocket for my spectacles I found that
they were on my nose.
"I have returned to the spot many times since, but I never could
induce a beetle to enter into conversation on the subject, the hole
remains obstinately impassable, and I have not been able to repeat my
visit to the Land of Lost Toys.
"When I recall my many sins against the playthings of my childhood, I
am constrained humbly to acknowledge that perhaps this is just as
well."
SAM SETS UP SHOP.
"I think you might help me, Dot," cried Sam in dismal and rather
injured tones.
It was the morning following the day of the earthquake, and of Aunt
Penelope's arrival. Sam had his back to Dot, and his face to the fire,
over which indeed he had bent for so long that he appeared to be half
roasted.
"What do you want?" asked Dot, who was working at a doll's night-dress
that had for long been partly finished, and now seemed in a fair way
to completion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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