One very snowy day, when we couldn’t play in the garden, we had tried all the games we could think of, and Molly was getting crosser and crosser because she could not draw Selina properly, when I said: “Let’s play hide-and-seek.” Molly said: “All right, only I don’t know where half my dolls are. You must lend me some of yours. I’ll have the talking one and the one that shuts its eyes.”

 

I didn’t like this very much, but I gave in. “And our side will hide first,” said Molly. I didn’t like that either, but I gave in again.

 

I said good-bye to my dear Rosalie and Selina, and handed them over to Molly; then I turned my pinafore over my head and waited while she hid them.

 

“Cuckoo! cuckoo!” cried Molly, as a signal that all were hidden.

 

I soon found Molly; she was behind the window curtain, and made it stick out, of course; and I soon found her dolls and my Selina. Molly had hidden her in the coal-scuttle, and though she had wrapped her in a piece of paper, I didn’t think it was quite nice of her; but I couldn’t find Rosalie, the squeaking² doll, anywhere. I looked in Nurse’s work-basket, I looked in the doll’s house, I looked everywhere you could think of—no Rosalie! Just then Molly had to go and have her dress “tried on.”

 

Hide-and-seek is no fun by yourself, but I couldn’t bear to think of Rosalie being hidden somewhere all alone, so I went on looking. It was beginning to get dark, and Nurse had gone down to her tea, and I felt very miserable³ and forsaken⁴, when suddenly in the quiet Nursery I heard Rosalie’s well-known squeak¹. The dear doll, she was calling to me! The sound came from the chest-of-drawers. The drawers themselves we were forbidden to open, but I pulled out Nurse’s work-drawer, and there, lying on the cut-out

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