She lifted the thing, and they were face to face. The child’s eyes opened wider and wider, the pupils dilated, the lids flickered nervously, then came a faint, long-drawn “Oh--h--h!” another pause, broken at last by the announcement, calmly and gravely made, “She eyes, don’t fit each other!”
Marie had trouble with her personal pronouns, as well as with her relatives.
Next moment she rolled over and began to scramble into a sitting posture, during which she all unconsciously pressed the doll tightly against her little chest. (Oh, for us, happy accident!) for the next instant, with a shout of surprise and joy, she cried, “Oh, she cuddles, she cuddles!”
Two words which were to become familiar to every member of the family, in the time to come, “She cuddles, and she is Dinah, my peshous! Dinah, always!”
And she who had thought of Lillian rashly exclaimed, “But why on earth, Dinah?”
And received for answer, “Caus’, I say so, and caus’ my mamma jess hates the Dinah song.” A so-called “comic,” named “Wilkins and Dinah” that Mrs. Tyler raged at when her young brother used to sing it within her hearing.
So it was pure malice that prompted “Tyler’s little vixen” to name her new treasure “Dinah”! Then following that rule of action familiar to all small girls with dolls since before the building of the temple, she turned Dinah upside down, that she might know quantity, quality, and condition of her undergarments, and when she found that Dinah possessed that final charm, that very crown of happy dolldom, the ability to have her clothes put on and off, to be dressed and undressed at will, the measure was full, her joy complete.
She turned her Dinah right side up again and kissed her fondly. At that sight my short legs basely betrayed me, and I sat down with unnecessary emphasis the deaf might have heard. Instantly the cry arose: “You, Cawie, Cawie, come here and see my ‘peshous Dinah’!”
I rose and obeyed. Shortly after, when the “peshous one” had been properly shod, and Marie was dressed for tea, we went forth to walk Dinah; but Marie, recalling the three handsome dolls sitting bolt upright in the parlor, suddenly commanded me to return and make faces at them, “real bad faces, too, for being so stiff and big they couldn’t cuddle.”