"I don't know," replied Johnnie, glaring at the wax-boy with very hostile feelings.
"Linnæus? No, I don't quite like to give that name to a doll. Suppose, Johnnie, we christen him _Hortus Siccus_. That's the Latin name for a herbal, and will help you to remember it when you form one of your own. Now take him and have a good play."
How was it possible to have a good play with a doll named _Hortus Siccus_? Johnnie hated him, and could not conceal the fact. Miss Inches was grieved and disappointed. But she said to herself, "Perhaps she is just too old for dolls and just too young to care for pictures. It isn't so easy to fix a child's mental position as I thought it would be. I must try something else."
She really loved Johnnie and wished to make her happy, so the thought occurred of giving her a child's party. "I don't approve of them," she told her friends. "But perhaps it may be possible to combine some instruction with the amusements, and Johnnie is _so_ pleased. Dear little creature, she is only eleven, and small things are great at that age. I suppose it is always so with youth."
Twenty children were asked to the party. They were to come at four, play for two hours in the garden, then have supper, and afterward games in the parlor.
Johnnie felt as if she had taken a dose of laughing-gas, at the sight of twenty boys and girls all at once, real boys, real girls! How long it was since she had seen any! She capered and jumped in a way which astonished Miss Inches, and her high spirits so infected the rest that a general romp set in, and the party grew noisy to an appalling degree.
"Oh, Johnnie dear, no more 'Tag,'" cried poor Mamma Marion, catching her adopted child and wiping her hot face with a handkerchief. "It is really too rude, such a game as that. It is only fit for boys."
"Oh, please!--please!--_please_!" entreated Johnnie. "It is splendid. Papa always let us; he did indeed, he always did."
"I thought you were my child now, and anxious for better things than tag," said Miss Inches gravely. Johnnie had to submit, but she pouted, shrugged her shoulders, and looked crossly about her, in a way which Mamma Marion had never seen before, and which annoyed her very much.