Suddenly Ann grabbed his arm and whispered: "Look, look! Did you see
them? Marie-Louise and Angelina-Elfrida, my _own_ dolls, and they
never so much as bowed!"
"Perhaps they didn't know you," whispered Rudolf.
"They did, too," returned his sister angrily. "They just laughed and
turned their heads the other way, horrid things! Just wait, I'll tell
them what I think of them; but, oh, Rudolf, here come more carriages
and more dolls in them, and how queerly they are dressed, these last,
I mean! I never saw any dolls like them before. See their poke
bonnets, and their fringed mantles, and their little hoop-skirts,
but, oh, look, _look_, can that be the Queen?"
Ann's voice sounded disappointed as well as surprised, and in her
excitement she spoke so loud that Captain Jinks himself turned his
threatening eye on her and called out: "Silence!" But Ann paid no
attention to him, nor did the other children; the eyes of all three
were fixed upon a little figure who rode all alone at the very end of
the procession. They knew she must be the Queen by the respectful way
in which Captain Jinks and the sergeant saluted, but she was very
different from what they had imagined a Queen to be. The wooden horse
which she rode was not handsome, indeed one of his legs was missing,
but he pranced and curvetted so proudly upon the remaining three that
it seemed as if he knew he carried a Queen upon his back.
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