HIDE-AND-SEEK is a jolly game when you play it out of doors and there are a good many of you; but when you have to play it indoors and there are only two of you, you have to make the dolls play too. Molly and I used to each be captain of a side; she had nine dolls and I had only seven; so our side had much more looking to do than hers.

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 squeaking 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 miserable and forsaken, when suddenly in the quiet Nursery I heard Rosalie’s well-known squeak. 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 flannel petticoats, was my precious Rosalie. What I had so often wished had come true, no doubt. Rosalie had squeaked by herself. If she could squeak she could talk, and what interesting talks we should have! I told Nurse all about it when she came up from her tea.

“Bless you, my lambie,” she said; “dollies don’t squeak without something to make them.”

She went to the work-drawer and pulled it open. Lying curled up at the back was pussy.

“It was the cat you heard,” said Nurse; “or perhaps pussy sat on the doll’s squeak.”

It was a dreadful blow, but after all, I don’t think I quite believed that pussy had anything to do with it; and for a long time I used to take Rosalie into quiet corners whilst Molly was busy making her dolls new dresses, and beg her to squeak just a little for me, so that no one else should hear; but she never did, so that perhaps Nurse was right after all.

E. Nesbit.