often the case in doll society, but with every article necessary and
proper to a lady or gentleman, down to items that I could not mention.
And all these garments, you must know, could be unfastened and taken off.
I have known dolls--stylish enough dolls, to look at, some of them--who
have been content to go about with their clothes gummed on to them, and,
in some cases, nailed on with tacks, which I take to be a slovenly and
unhealthy habit. But this family could be undressed in five minutes,
without the aid of either hot water or a chisel.

Not that it was advisable from an artistic point of view that any of them
should. They had not the figure that looks well in its natural
state--none of them. There was a want of fulness about them all.
Besides, without their clothes, it might have been difficult to
distinguish the baby from the papa, or the maid from the mistress, and
thus domestic complications might have arisen.

When all was ready for their reception we established them in their home.
We put as much of the baby to bed as the cot would hold, and made the
papa and mamma comfortable in the drawing-room, where they sat on the
floor and stared thoughtfully at each other across the table. (They had
to sit on the floor because the chairs were not big enough.) The girl we
placed in the kitchen, where she leant against the dresser in an attitude
suggestive of drink, embracing the broom we had given her with maudlin
affection. Then we lifted up the house with care, and carried it
cautiously into another room, and with the deftness of experienced
conspirators placed it at the foot of a small bed, on the south-west
corner of which an absurdly small somebody had hung an absurdly small
stocking.

To return to our own doll's house, Ethelbertha and I, discussing the