or two days together.

Polly and I never quarrelled. I did her behests manfully, as a general
rule; and if her sway became intolerable, I complained and bewailed,
on which she relented, being as easily moved to pity as to wrath.

As the weather grew more chill, we seldom went out except in the
morning. In the afternoon Polly and I (sometimes accompanied by Leo)
played in the nursery at the top of the house.

Now and then the other girls would come up, and "play at dolls" with
Polly. On these occasions the treatment I experienced was certainly
hard. They were soon absorbed in dressing and undressing, sham meals,
sham lessons, and all the domestic romance of doll-life, in which,
according to my poor abilities, I should have been most happy to have
taken a part. But, on the unwarrantable assumption that "boys could
not play at dolls," the only part assigned me in the puppet comedy was
to take the dolls' dirty clothes to and from an imaginary wash in a
miniature wheelbarrow. I did for some time assume the character of
dolls' medical man with considerable success; but having vaccinated
the kid arm of one of my patients too deeply on a certain occasion
with a big pin, she suffered so severely from loss of bran that I was
voted a practitioner of the old school, and dismissed. I need hardly
say that this harsh decision proved the ruin of my professional
prospects, and I was sent back to my wheelbarrow. It was when we were
tired of our ordinary amusements, during a week of wet weather, that
Polly and I devised a new piece of fun to enliven the monotony of the
hours when we were shut up in that town nursery at the top of the
house.

Outside the nursery-windows were iron bars--a sensible precaution of
Aunt Maria against accidents to "the little ones." One day when the
window was slightly open, and Polly and I were hanging on the
window-ledge, in attitudes that fully justified the precautionary
measure of a grating, a bit of paper which was rolled up in Polly's
hand escaped from her grasp, and floated down into the street. In a
moment Polly and I were standing on the window-ledge, peering down--to
the best of our ability--into the square and into the area depths
below. Like a snow-flake in summer, we saw our paper-twist lying on
the pavement; but our delight rose to ecstasy when a portly passer-by
stooped and picked up the document and carefully examined it.

Out of this incident arose a systematic amusement, which, in advance