Cynthia blushed all over and the nurse actually turned pale. The
Racketty-Packettys tumbled down in a heap beneath their window and
began to say their prayers very fast.

"It is only a shabby old doll's house, your Highness," Cynthia
stammered out. "It belonged to my Grandmamma, and it ought not to
be in the nursery. I thought you had had it burned, Nurse!"

"Burned!" the little girl Princess cried out in the most shocked
way. "Why if it was mine, I wouldn't have it burned for worlds! Oh!
please push the chair away and let me look at it. There are no
doll's houses like it anywhere in these days." And when the
arm-chair was pushed aside she scrambled down on to her knees just
as if she was not a little girl Princess at all.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" she said. "How funny and dear! What a darling old
doll's house. It is shabby and wants mending, of course, but it is
almost exactly like one my Grandmamma had--she kept it among her
treasures and only let me look at it as a great, great treat."

Cynthia gave a gasp, for the little girl Princess's Grandmamma had
been the Queen and people had knelt down and kissed her hand and
had been obliged to go out of the room backwards before her.

The little girl Princess was simply filled with joy. She picked up
Meg and Peg and Kilmanskeg and Gustibus and Peter Piper as if they
had been really a Queen's dolls.

"Oh! the darling dears," she said. "Look at their nice, queer faces
and their funny clothes. Just--just like Grandmamma's dollies'