Now the houses were left behind and they entered a little park, where tiny artificial lakes glittered and stiff little trees were set about on the bright green grass.  In the center of this park stood the doll palace.  It was pure white, finished in gold, and had real glass windows in it, and white marble steps leading up to it, and high gilded gates where a guard of soldiers turned out to present arms, and a band was beginning to play.  The rest of the procession turned in at the gates of the palace, but rather to the children’s disappointment, the Queen gave their coachman orders to drive on.

“You may see my palace afterward, if we have time,” she said, “but I want to take you first of all to see my dear old home where I used to live when I was a girl, when the little mother took care of me.”

The children looked at one another.  Then Peter said boldly:  “Was that when you were Aunt Jane’s doll?  You weren’t a Queen then, were you?”

“No, indeed,” answered her majesty, smiling.  “I was just an ugly little doll, the happiest, best-loved little doll in all the world, and with the dearest little mother.  But here we are, and you shall see for yourself what a snug home I had.”

The old doll house looked neat enough from the outside, to be sure, but I am afraid if the children had run across it in the attic at Aunt Jane’s they would have taken it for a couple of large packing-boxes set one upon the other.  Once inside, however, they forgot how impatient they had been to see the palace and its gorgeous furnishings, they were so interested and amused by the homely furnishings and neat little arrangements so proudly displayed to them by the Corn-cob Queen.

She led the children through one room after another, explaining each thing as they passed it.  Those little muslin curtains at the windows, the little mother had hemmed them all herself.  It was she who had made that wonderful cradle out of cardboard, with sheets from a pair of grandfather’s old pocket-handkerchiefs, she who had pieced that tiniest of tiny patchwork quilts!  In the kitchen that neat set of pots and pans made from acorns and the shells of walnuts was the work of her hands, assisted, perhaps, by the penknife of a certain little boy.  That blue and white tea-set on the pantry shelves—­the children recognized it at once as having come out of the sandal-wood box—­why it was almost worn out from the number of cups of tea the old doll and her little mother had taken together in the good old days!

“It’s just the dearest little house in the world,” sighed Ann, when, after having seen and admired everything to their heart’s content, they took their places in the carriage again, “and we don’t wonder you love it!  The things that come straight from the toy shops are not really half so nice as the things you fix yourself—­we understand now.  But I suppose,” she added thoughtfully, “you find it much grander being a Queen?”