"The idea took strange hold of us all. We said, 'Perhaps he is dead,'
and spoke and thought of him as dead, till I think we were fully
persuaded of it. No chair was set for him at the dolls' feasts, and I
gained a sort of melancholy distinction as being without a partner
now. 'You know Mary has no little Russian, since Ivan is dead.'

"When our visible pets died, we buried them with much pomp, to the
sound of a drum and a tin trumpet, in a piece of ground by the
cabbage-bed; but in the present instance that ceremony was impossible.
We resolved, however, to erect a gravestone to the memory of our fancy
friend in his own garden. I had seen letters cut on stone, and was
confident that with a chisel and hammer nothing could be easier. These
the nursery tool-box furnished. I wrote out an elaborate inscription
headed by Reka Dom in Russian characters, and we got a stone and set
to work. The task, however, was harder than we had supposed. My long
composition was discarded, and we resolved to be content with this
simple sentence, _To the memory of Ivan_. But 'brevity is the soul of
wit,' and the TO took so long to cut, that we threw out three more
words, and the epitaph finally stood thus:

TO IVAN.

"In a rude fashion this was accomplished; and with crape on our arms
and the accustomed music we set up the stone among the lilies.

* * * * *

"In time, Ida, we grew up, as it is called. Almost before we knew it,
and whilst we still seemed to be looking forward to our emancipation