an
aristocratic manner--until I could _scream_. Just to see you dears
dancing about in your rags and tags and laughing and inventing
games as if you didn't mind anything, is such a relief."

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

She nearly laughed her little curly head off when they all went
round the house with her, and Peter Piper showed her the holes in
the carpet and the stuffing coming out of the sofas, and the
feathers out of the beds, and the legs tumbling off the chairs. She
had never seen anything like it before.

"At the Castle, nothing is funny at all," she said. "And nothing
ever sticks out or hangs down or tumbles off. It is so plain and
new."

"But I think we ought to tell her, Duke," Ridiklis said. "We may
have our house burned over our heads any day." She really stopped
laughing for a whole minute when she heard that, but she was rather
like Peter Piper in disposition and she said almost immediately.

"Oh! they'll never do it. They've forgotten you." And Peter Piper
said:

"Don't let's think of it. Let's all join hands and dance round and
round and kick up our heels and laugh as hard as ever we can."

And they did--and Lady Patsy laughed harder than any one else.
After that she was always stealing away from Tidy Castle and coming
in and having fun. Sometimes she stayed all night and slept with
Meg and Peg and everybody invented new games and stories and they
really never went to bed until daylight. But the Castle dolls grew
more and more scornful every day, and tossed their heads higher and
higher and sniffed louder and louder until it sounded as if they
all had influenza. They never lost an opportunity of saying
disdainful things and once the Duchess wrote a letter to Cynthia,
saying that she insisted on removing to a decent neighborhood. She
laid the letter in her desk but the gentleman mouse came in the
night and carried it away. So Cynthia never saw it and I don't
believe she could have read it if she had seen it because the
Duchess wrote very badly--even for a doll.

And then what do you suppose happened? One morning Cynthia began
to play that all the Tidy Castle dolls had scarlet fever. She said
it had broken out in the night and she undressed them all and put
them into bed and gave them medicine. She could not find Lady
Patsy, so _she_ escaped the contagion. The truth was that Lady
Patsy had stayed all night at Racketty-Packetty House, where they
were giving an imitation Court