"MY DEAR BIRDIE,--I met her just outside Tom Gate, walking very stiffly, and I think she was trying to find her way to my rooms. So I said, 'Why have you come here without Birdie?' So she said, 'Birdie's gone! and Emily's gone! and Mabel isn't kind to me!' And two little waxy tears came running down her cheeks.
"Why, how stupid of me! I've never told you who it was all the time! It was your new doll. I was very glad to see her, and I took her to my room, and gave her some vesta matches to eat, and a cup of nice melted wax to drink, for the poor little thing was _very_ hungry and thirsty after her long walk. So I said, 'Come and sit down by the fire, and let's have a comfortable chat?' 'Oh no! _no_!' she said, 'I'd _much_ rather not. You know I do melt so _very_ easily!' And she made me take her quite to the other side of the room, where it was _very_ cold: and then she sat on my knee, and fanned herself with a pen-wiper, because she said she was afraid the end of her nose was beginning to melt.
"'You've no _idea_ how careful we have to be,' we dolls, she said. 'Why, there was a sister of mine--would you believe it?--she went up to the fire to warm her hands, and one of her hands dropped _right_ off! There now!' 'Of course it dropped _right_ off,' I said, 'because it was the _right_ hand.' 'And how do you know it was the _right_ hand, Mister Carroll?' the doll said. So I said, 'I think it must have been the _right_ hand because the other hand was _left_.'
"The doll said, 'I shan't laugh. It's a very bad joke. Why, even a common wooden doll could make a better joke than that. And besides, they've made my mouth so stiff and hard, that I _can't_ laugh if I try ever so much?' 'Don't be cross about it,' I said, 'but tell me this: I'm going to give Birdie and the other children one photograph each, which ever they choose; which do you think Birdie will choose?' 'I don't know,' said the doll; 'you'd better ask her!' So I took her home in a hansom cab. Which would you like, do you think? Arthur as Cupid? or Arthur and Wilfred together? or you and Ethel as beggar children? or Ethel standing on a box? or, one of yourself?--Your affectionate friend,
Among the bundle of letters and MS. before me, I find written on a half sheet of note-paper the following Ollendorfian dialogue. It is interesting because, slight and trivial as it is, it in some strange way bears the imprint of Lewis Carroll's style. The thing is written in the familiar violet ink, and neatly dated in the corner 29/9/90:--