w I got there
is to this moment a mystery to me--but there I was.

"There was a great deal of excitement about the Jack-in-a-box's speech.
It was evident that he was considered an orator, and, indeed, I have
seen counsel in a real court look wonderfully like him. Meanwhile, my
old toys appeared to be getting together. I had no idea that I had had
so many. I had really been very fond of most of them, and my heart beat
as the sight of them recalled scenes long forgotten, and took me back
to childhood and home. There were my little gardening tools, and my
slate, and there was the big doll's bedstead, that had a real mattress,
and real sheets and blankets, all marked with the letter D, and a
work-basket made in the blind school, and a shilling School of Art
paint-box, and a wooden doll we used to call the Dowager, and
innumerable other toys which I had forgotten till the sight of them
recalled them to my memory, but which have again passed from my mind.
Exactly opposite to me stood the Chinese mandarin, nodding as I had
never seen him nod since the day when I finally stopped his
performances by ill-directed efforts to discover how he did it.

"And what was that familiar figure among the rest, in a yellow silk
dress and maroon velvet cloak and hood trimmed with black lace? How
those clothes recalled the friends who gave them to me! And surely this
was no other than my dear doll Rosa--the beloved companion of five
years of my youth, whose hair I wore in a locket after I was grown up.
No one could say I had ill-treated _her_. Indeed, she fixed her
eyes on me with a most encouraging smile--but then she always smiled,
her mouth was painted so.

"'All whom it may concern, take notice,' shouted the Jack-in-a-box, at
this point, 'that the rule of this honourable court is tit for tat.'

"'Tit, tat, tumble two,' muttered the slate in a cracked voice. (How
well I remembered the fall that cracked it, and the sly games of tit
tat that varied the monotony of our long multiplication sums!)

"'What are you talking about?' said the Jack-in-a-box, sharply; 'if you
have grievances, state them, and you shall have satisfaction, as I told
you before.'

"'---- and five make nine,' added the slate promptly, 'and six are
fifteen, and eight are twenty-seven--there we go again.' I wonder why I
never get up to the top of a line of figures right. It will never prove
at this rate.'

"'His mind is lost in calculations,' said the Jack-in-a-box,
'