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The Lonesomest Doll
the doll for answer. But when Nichette saw the tattered dress and the crownless head of the lonesomest doll, she uttered a cry.
“Oh! what has happened to her pretty robe? Where are her jewels and her crown? She does not look like a queen any more. What does it mean?”
Clotilde looked down at her own torn and tumbled dress. “Still, she looks like me, Nichette, does she not?” she asked with a tired little smile. And in a whisper she added, “I am glad of it. She is now just a real little girl doll, not too grand to play with. I shall keep her so always, and she will not need to be shut up in a box any more—she is no longer the rich handsomest doll.”
The Queen’s chariot with four white horses was waiting to carry her back to the palace, and Clotilde made Nichette get in and ride with her. “For she is my best friend, is Nichette,” she explained to the uncles and aunts who would have made some objection. But there was something new in the Queen’s look and manner which made them all willing to let her have her way, though they peeped sideways at one an-74
