When all was ready for their reception we established them in their home.  We put as much of the baby to bed as the cot would hold, and made the papa and mamma comfortable in the drawing-room, where they sat on the floor and stared thoughtfully at each other across the table. (They had to sit on the floor because the chairs were not big enough.) The girl we placed in the kitchen, where she leant against the dresser in an attitude suggestive of drink, embracing the broom we had given her with maudlin affection.  Then we lifted up the house with care, and carried it cautiously into another room, and with the deftness of experienced conspirators placed it at the foot of a small bed, on the south-west corner of which an absurdly small somebody had hung an absurdly small stocking.

To return to our own doll’s house, Ethelbertha and I, discussing the subject during our return journey in the train, resolved that, next year, we ourselves would possess a houseboat, a smaller houseboat, if possible, than even the one we had just seen.  It should have art-muslin curtains and a flag, and the flowers about it should be wild roses and forget-me-nots.  I could work all the morning on the roof, with an awning over me to keep off the sun, while Ethelbertha trimmed the roses and made cakes for tea; and in the evenings we would sit out on the little deck, and Ethelbertha would play the guitar (she would begin learning it at once), or we could sit quiet and listen to the nightingales.

For, when you are very, very young you dream that the summer is all sunny days and moonlight nights, that the wind blows always softly from the west, and that roses will thrive anywhere.  But, as you grow older, you grow tired of waiting for the gray sky to break.  So you close the door and come in, and crouch over the fire, wondering why the winds blow ever from the east:  and you have given up trying to rear roses.

I knew a little cottage girl who saved up her money for months and months so as to buy a new frock in which to go to a flower-show.  But the day of the flower-show was a wet day, so she wore an old frock instead.  And all the fete days for quite a long while were wet days, and she feared she would never have a chance of wearing her pretty white dress.  But at last there came a fete day morning that was bright and sunny, and then the little girl clapped her hands and ran upstairs, and took her new frock (which had been her “new frock” for so long a time that it was now the oldest frock she had) from the box where it lay neatly folded between lavender and thyme, and held it up, and laughed to think how nice she would look in it.

But when she went to put it on, she found that she had out-grown it, and that it was too small for her every way.  So she had to wear a common old frock after all.

Things happen that way, you know, in this world.  There were a boy and girl once who loved each other very dearly.  But they were both poor, so they agreed to wait till he had made enough money for them to live comfortably upon, and then they would marry and be happy.  It took him a long while to make, because making money is very slow work, and he wanted, while he was about it, to make enough for them to be very happy upon indeed.  He accomplished the task eventually, however, and came back home a wealthy man.