Tales of the Toys, Told by Themselves

ndered at that the old store of rubbish had not been remembered. Some officious person had unlatched the door and left it ajar, and a good blast of wind in the afternoon, when old Mrs. Davis set the window open first, had pushed it quite back, though she had not observed the fact when she closed the nursery windows before she left. On the floor lay a heap of old leaden tea-things, mixed up with some of the inhabitants of a battered Noah's Ark which lay empty on its side on the top shelf. Several old marbles were nestled cosily up in an old toy kitchen which had been turned upside down to receive them. A humming-top, whose key had departed, lay side by side with a shuttlecock that had been shorn of half its feathers. The skipping-rope had become hopelessly entangled with the tail of the kite; the hoop had hung itself round the neck of a very ancient rocking-horse, whose mane and tail had long disappeared; to add to its misfortunes the poor animal now lacked the whole of one leg, and part of another, and being