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The Lonesomest Doll
poor thing,” said Nichette, and she hugged Mignon closer. So she made the lonesomest doll happy for a long, long time, and the shadows began to fall more darkly, but Nichette did not notice. She was talking with Mignon about Clotilde, the Queen.
“How beautiful you are!” said Nichette. “I do not see how your truly mamma can help loving you. She must be lovely to look at if, as they say, she is exactly like you. I have never seen her, but I know just what she is like inside. She is proud and disagreeable. She never goes to walk, nor plays outdoors,—she is too finely dressed,—as you are, my Mignon. I should not let you wear these lovely clothes every day. She never comes into my garden except to see the fountain play. I never saw the fountain play. Oh, how I should like to! But when she comes they lock the doors and will not let me in. Then they sweep all the rose leaves up, and shave the lawns close and ugly, and scrape the pretty green moss off the sun-dial. And she makes them throw away my playthings under the rosebush, so when I come the next day they28
