the hedge she cast a backward look at the Garden, which was now so
still that she thought it looked like a picture in a dream--shimmering
and bright and clear, without a soul left at home but the Plynck's
cerulean Echo and the sleeping Snoodle.

As soon as they passed through the hedge they found themselves in a
picturesque broken country, rather difficult to traverse, but very
prettily decorated with rocks, streams, and waterfalls. Little groves
of cedars, the exact size and shape of Christmas-trees, grew out of
the rocks; the candles were already full-grown, but Schlorge sent the
Japanese doll running back to tell Sara that she must not light them,
as they would not be ripe till Christmas Eve. Sara had never seen a
prettier place, but she was rather worried by a maternal anxiety about
the dolls. For it was certainly not a very safe place for them. Of
course the Brown Teddy-Bear and the Billiken were all right, though
the latter might come to grief if he should fall on his head. The
Japanese doll, who had lost a hand, was unbreakable; but unbreakable
only means that you may be dropped from a reasonable height upon
hard-wood floors, but not from a second-story window on concrete or
asphalt. That was how the Japanese doll had lost his hand (it would
have been his head, but for the fact that the accident happened while
he was indisposed from neuralgia, and had his head pinned up in the
Baby's flannel petticoat). And these rocks certainly looked as hard as
any pavement. And even as Sara worried, the worst happened: she heard
a dreadful cracking sound, followed by a shrill clamor from the dolls
and a hoarse cry from Schlorge, and the grim, excited voice of the
Snimmy's wife. It was by no means a pleasant sound, like the cracking
of breaking rules: no, it was the familiar, heart-rending sound that
makes the heart of any mother of dolls turn cold. Sara went leaping
and scrambling down the rocks, with the Plynck and the Teacup hovering