l in the well-appointed chamber there,
with all its appropriate furniture, and invited herself to tea and
cakes with her. This chamber was splendidly furnished, everything on a
first-rate scale, and in good and admirable style, as I have already
said--and I don't know if you, my observant reader, have the
satisfaction of possessing an equally well-appointed room for your
dolls; a little beautifully-flowered sofa, a number of the most
charming little chairs, a nice little tea-table, and, above all, a
beautiful little white bed, where your pretty darlings of dolls go to
sleep? All this was in a corner of the shelf, the walls of which, in
this part, had beautiful little pictures hanging on them; and you may
well imagine that, in such a delightful chamber as this, the new doll
(whose name, as Marie had discovered, was Miss Clara) thought herself
extremely comfortably settled, and remarkably well off.

"It was getting very late, not so very far from midnight, indeed,
before the children could tear themselves away from all these Yuletide
fascinations, and Godpapa Drosselmeier had been gone a considerable
time. They remained riveted beside the glass cupboard, although their
mother several times reminded them that it was long after bedtime.
'Yes,' said Fritz, 'I know well enough that these poor fellows (meaning
his hussars) are tired enough, and awfully anxious to turn in for the
night, though as long as I'm here, not a man-jack of them dares to nod
his head.' With which he went off. But Marie earnestly begged for just
a little while longer, saying she had such a number of things to see
to, and promising that as soon as ever she had got them all settled she
would go to bed at once. Marie was a very good and reasonable child,
and therefore her mother allowed her to remain for a little longer with
her toys; but lest she should be too much occupied with her new doll
and the other playthings so as to forget to put out the candles which
were lighted all round on the wall sconces, she herself put all of them
out, leaving merely the lamp which hung from the ceiling to give a soft
and pleasant light. 'Come soon to your bed, Marie, or you'll never be
up in time in the morning,' cried her mother as she went away into the
bedroom.

"As soon as Marie was alone, she set rapidly to work to do the thing
which was chiefly at her heart to accomplish, and which, though she
scarcely knew why, she somehow did not like to set about in her
mother'