and ornaments and pictures and beds and baths and
lamps and book-cases, and with a knocker on the front door, and a
stable with a pony cart in it at the back. The minute she saw it
she called out:

"Oh! what a beautiful doll castle! What shall we do with that
untidy old Racketty-Packetty House now? It is too shabby and
old-fashioned to stand near it."

In fact, that was the way in which the old dolls' house got its
name. It had always been called, "The Dolls' House," before, but
after that it was pushed into the unfashionable neighborhood behind
the door and ever afterwards--when it was spoken of at all--it was
just called Racketty-Packetty House, and nothing else.

[Transcriber's Note: See picture tidyshire_castle.jpg]

Of course Tidy Castle was grand, and Tidy Castle was new and had
all the modern improvements in it, and Racketty-Packetty House was
as old-fashioned as it could be. It had belonged to Cynthia's
Grandmamma and had been made in the days when Queen Victoria was a
little girl, and when there were no electric lights even in
Princesses' dolls' houses. Cynthia's Grandmamma had kept it very
neat because she had been a good housekeeper even when she was
seven years old. But Cynthia was not a good housekeeper and she did
not re-cover the furniture when it got dingy, or re-paper the
walls, or mend the carpets and bedclothes, and she never thought of
such a thing as making new clothes for the doll family, so that of
course their early Victorian frocks and capes and bonnets grew in
time to be too shabby for words. You see, when Queen Victoria was a
little girl, dolls wore queer frocks and long pantalets and boy
dolls wore funny frilled trousers and coats which it would almost
make you laugh to look at.

But the Racketty-Packetty House family had known better days. I and
my Fairies had known them when they were quite new and had been a
birthday present just as Tidy Castle was when Cynthia turned eight
years old, and there was as much fuss about them when their house
arrived as Cynthia made when she saw Tidy Castle.

Cynthia's Grandmamma had danced about and clapped her hands with
delight, and she had scrambled down upon her knees and taken the
dolls out one by one and thought their clothes beautiful. And she
had given each one of them a grand name.

"This one shall be Amelia," she said. "And this one is Charlotte,
and this is Victoria Leopoldina, and this one Aurelia Matilda, and
this one Leontine, and thi