Apart from these drawbacks, however, the house was one that any doll agent would have been justified in describing as a “most desirable family residence”; and it had been furnished with a lavishness that bordered on positive ostentation.  In the bedroom there was a washing-stand, and on the washing-stand there stood a jug and basin, and in the jug there was real water.  But all this was as nothing.  I have known mere ordinary, middle-class dolls’ houses in which you might find washing-stands and jugs and basins and real water—­ay, and even soap.  But in this abode of luxury there was a real towel; so that a body could not only wash himself, but wipe himself afterwards, and that is a sensation that, as all dolls know, can be enjoyed only in the very first-class establishments.

Then, in the drawing-room, there was a clock, which would tick just so long as you continued to shake it (it never seemed to get tired); also a picture and a piano, and a book upon the table, and a vase of flowers that would upset the moment you touched it, just like a real vase of flowers.  Oh, there was style about this room, I can tell you.

But the glory of the house was its kitchen.  There were all things that heart could desire in this kitchen, saucepans with lids that took on and off, a flat-iron and a rolling-pin.  A dinner service for three occupied about half the room, and what space was left was filled up by the stove—­a real stove!  Think of it, oh ye owners of dolls’ houses, a stove in which you could burn real bits of coal, and on which you could boil real bits of potato for dinner—­except when people said you mustn’t, because it was dangerous, and took the grate away from you, and blew out the fire, a thing that hampers a cook.

I never saw a house more complete in all its details.  Nothing had been overlooked, not even the family.  It lay on its back, just outside the front door, proud but calm, waiting to be put into possession.  It was not an extensive family.  It consisted of four—­papa, and mamma, and baby, and the hired girl; just the family for a beginner.

It was a well-dressed family too—­not merely with grand clothes outside, covering a shameful condition of things beneath, such as, alas! is too often the case in doll society, but with every article necessary and proper to a lady or gentleman, down to items that I could not mention.  And all these garments, you must know, could be unfastened and taken off.  I have known dolls—­stylish enough dolls, to look at, some of them—­who have been content to go about with their clothes gummed on to them, and, in some cases, nailed on with tacks, which I take to be a slovenly and unhealthy habit.  But this family could be undressed in five minutes, without the aid of either hot water or a chisel.

Not that it was advisable from an artistic point of view that any of them should.  They had not the figure that looks well in its natural state—­none of them.  There was a want of fulness about them all.  Besides, without their clothes, it might have been difficult to distinguish the baby from the papa, or the maid from the mistress, and thus domestic complications might have arisen.