vention could
stem, she folded the child to her heart and lived another moment of
supreme joy.

The father sat by, making no comment, his eyes bright and twinkling.
Then he suggested that their Majesties, the dolls, had been waiting
long on the shelf. Was it not time they were receiving a visit?

The years of toil were telling on both father and mother, but they
daily refreshed themselves at the overbrimming fountain of Yuki Chan's
youth, and now, as they each took one of her hands to go in to see the
dolls, they were so gay that the child suggested that instead of
walking they should do the new one-two-three-hop she had learned at
the kindergarten.

It was unheard-of conduct, but it was for Yuki Chan, and father and
mother stumped along, cheered on by the small girl who was trying to
keep time, but was breathless through sheer excess of happiness.

There was nothing in the room to impede their progress. No chairs with
treacherous legs to trip over, no beds, nor tables with sharp corners
--nothing whatever but the matting, soft and thick, where Yuki Chan had
practised all the gymnastics of childhood unbruised and unharmed.

Half skipping, half hopping, and wholly undone with laughter and
exertion, the three at last reached the place where, for six years,
offerings had been made for the gift of the child who stood to these
two for love.

Arranged in the best room in the house, on five long red-covered
shelves, were dolls. Big dolls and little dolls, thin ones and fat
ones, each one to represent some royal man or woman of the long ago,
and dressed in a fashion of a time almost forgotten. There was Jimmu
Tenno, the first real emperor. His hair was done in a curious fashion
and his dress was of a wonderful brocade, while his hands clasped two
fierce-looking swords. There was Jingo, too, who had won fame and
lasting honor by her wonderful fighting, and was so great she had to
sit by the emperors and look down on the other empresses. Such a lot
of them! Some worthy to be remembered every day in the year, others
the more quickly forgotten the better.

Yuki Chan knew them all by heart, and she lingered before those she
liked and quickly passed those she did not care for. She could not be
rude to an emperor, even though he had been dead hundreds of years.
She was really not very afraid of the greatness of the old doll men
and women who sat on the shelf, still it was well to be careful about
handling them. She might be t