Between themselves, I may say, they squabbled systematically, and were
never either friends or enemies for two days together.
Polly and I never quarrelled. I did her behests manfully, as a general
rule; and if her sway became intolerable, I complained and bewailed,
on which she relented, being as easily moved to pity as to wrath.
As the weather grew more chill, we seldom went out except in the
morning. In the afternoon Polly and I (sometimes accompanied by Leo)
played in the nursery at the top of the house.
Now and then the other girls would come up, and "play at dolls" with
Polly. On these occasions the treatment I experienced was certainly
hard. They were soon absorbed in dressing and undressing, sham meals,
sham lessons, and all the domestic romance of doll-life, in which,
according to my poor abilities, I should have been most happy to have
taken a part. But, on the unwarrantable assumption that "boys could
not play at dolls," the only part assigned me in the puppet comedy was
to take the dolls' dirty clothes to and from an imaginary wash in a
miniature wheelbarrow. I did for some time assume the character of
dolls' medical man with considerable success; but having vaccinated
the kid arm of one of my patients too deeply on a certain occasion
with a big pin, she suffered so severely from loss of bran that I was
voted a practitioner of the old school, and dismissed.
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