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The Lonesomest Doll
Nichette when it was time to go home for tea, if the queer little uncomfortable clock inside herself had not already made her guess the hour of bread and milk.
But the glory of the garden was the marble fountain which stood in the middle, with its great bronze fish holding up his wide-open mouth as if to catch flies. Pierre said that the fish could spout a stream of water ten feet high when the Queen wished him to. Nichette had never seen him do it; she was always hoping that he would some day while she was in the garden. The fountain had a lovely basin, very convenient for washing the children’s clothes, and for sailing rose-leaf boats and bigger craft of chips or paper.
Under the rosebush Nichette had told her dolls to wait for her; and she found the obedient family just as she had left them. They were a battered quartette, with but half a dozen legs, and not so many arms among them; and even when they were new they must have been ugly little wooden things. But Nichette loved them dearly. She set them all up in a row and kissed12
