said boldly: "Was that
when you were Aunt Jane's doll? You weren't a Queen _then_, were
you?"

"No, indeed," answered her majesty, smiling. "I was just an ugly
little doll, the happiest, best-loved little doll in all the world,
and with the dearest little mother. But here we are, and you shall see
for yourself what a snug home I had."

The old doll house looked neat enough from the outside, to be sure,
but I am afraid if the children had run across it in the attic at Aunt
Jane's they would have taken it for a couple of large packing-boxes
set one upon the other. Once inside, however, they forgot how
impatient they had been to see the palace and its gorgeous
furnishings, they were so interested and amused by the homely
furnishings and neat little arrangements so proudly displayed to them
by the Corn-cob Queen.

She led the children through one room after another, explaining each
thing as they passed it. Those little muslin curtains at the windows,
the little mother had hemmed them all herself. It was she who had made
that wonderful cradle out of cardboard, with sheets from a pair of
grandfather's old pocket-handkerchiefs, she who had pieced that
tiniest of tiny patchwork quilts! In the kitchen that neat set of pots
and pans made from acorns and the shells of walnuts was the work of
her hands, assisted, perhaps, by the penknife of a certain little boy.
That blue and white tea-set on the pantry shelves--the children
recognized it at once as having come out of the sandal-wood box--why
it was almost worn out from the number of cups of tea the old doll and
her little mother had taken together in the good old days!

"It's just the dearest little house in the world," sighed Ann, when,
after having seen and admired everything to their heart's content,
they took their places in the carriage again, "and we don't wonder you
love it! The things that come straight from the toy shops are not
really half so nice as the things you fix yourself--we understand now.
But I suppose," she added thoughtfully, "you find it much grander
being a Queen?"

"Grander, perhaps," sighed the corn-cob doll, "but a great deal more
of a nuisance. However--"

Just then the pop of a toy cannon interrupted the Queen's speech. They
had driven back almost to the palace, and could see a crowd of common
dolls of all kinds and sizes gathering on the green in front of the
gilded gates. At the same moment a troop of soldiers, headed by the
little tin captai