th his
book before him, Gay blowing over the grass like a feather, and so she
walked towards the summer-house.

Timothy was not there, but little Lady Gay was having a party all to
herself, and the scene was such a pretty one that Samantha stooped
behind the lattice and listened.

There was a table spread for four, with bits of broken china and shells
for dishes, and pieces of apple and gingerbread for the feast. There
were several dolls present (notably one without any head, who was not
likely to shine at a dinner party), but Gay's first-born sat in her lap;
and only a mother could have gazed upon such a battered thing and loved
it. For Gay took her pleasures madly, and this faithful creature had
shared them all; but not having inherited her mother's somewhat rare
recuperative powers, she was now fit only for a free bed in a
hospital,--a state of mind and body which she did not in the least
endeavor to conceal. One of her shoe-button eyes dangled by a linen
thread in a blood-curdling sort of way; her nose, which had been a pink
glass bead, was now a mere spot, ambiguously located. Her red worsted
lips were sadly raveled, but that she did not regret, "for it was
kissin' as done it." Her yarn hair was attached to her head with
safety-pins, and her internal organs intruded themselves on the public
through a gaping wound in the side. Never mind! if you have any
curiosity to measure the strength of the ideal, watch a child with her
oldest doll. Rags sat at the head of the dinner-table, and had taken the
precaution to get the headless doll on his right, with a view to eating
her gingerbread as well as his own,--doing no violence to the
proprieties in this way, but rather concealing her defects from a
carping public.

"I tell you sompfin' ittle Mit Vildy Tummins," Gay was saying to her
battered offspring. "You 's doin' to have a new ittle sit-ter
to-mowowday, if you 's a dood ittle dirl an does to seep nite an kick,
you _ser-weet_ ittle Vildy Tummins!" (All this punctuated with ardent
squeezes fraught with delicious agony to one who had a wound in her
side!) "Vay fink you 's worn out, 'weety, but we know you isn't, don'
we, 'weety? An I'll tell you nite ittle tory to-night, tause you isn't
seepy. Wunt there was a ittle day hen 'at tole a net an' laid fir-teen
waw edds in it, an bime bye erleven or seventeen ittle chits f'ew out of
'em, an Mit Vildy 'dopted 'em all! In 't that a nite tory, you
_ser-weet_ ittle Mit Vildy Tu