Sandmans Goodnight Stories | Page 5

existence.
"'Horrors! horrors!' chirped Great-grandfather Cricket. 'Whatever will
we do to preserve the family?'
"'Easy enough to do that,' said Dr. Frog. 'Sleep days and sing at night as
our family do; little chance we would have if we came out and sang in
the daytime.'
"So that is the reason we sleep days and sing nights, so the birds and
chickens and bug-eating animals cannot catch us.
"Of course, sometimes they do get a cricket, but it is always one who
has stayed out too late or gotten up too early, usually a very young
cricket who thinks he knows more than his mother or father.
"But the good little crickets who mind and get up when they are called
are pretty sure to live to a good old age."
When Madam Cricket stopped talking all the little crickets stood
looking at her with very curious expressions on their faces.
"We are good little crickets, aren't we, mother?" they asked.
"Of course you are. Here you are all ready to go out and sing and the
sun has just dropped behind the hill," she said.
"Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp," they sang as they scampered after their

mother out into the night.

THE PLAYROOM WEDDING
[Illustration: The Playroom Wedding]
Paper Doll had been the maid of honor, but she did not at all approve of
the match. "It will never be a happy marriage," she told Teddy Bear the
night of the wedding. "Such marriages never are. How I should feel
married to a man who wore dresses."
Yes, he did look as if he wore a dress, for he was a Japanese gentleman
doll, you see, and when he came to the playroom to live everybody,
including French Doll Marie, thought he was very queer looking.
But after a while they became used to Takeo, for that was his name,
and when the little mistress announced that Marie was to marry Takeo
she did not make the least objection.
"What difference does it make?" she said to Frieda, the Dutch doll, who
lived next to her. "I suppose I shall have to marry someone, and truly I
could never live with Jumping Jack; that fellow makes me so nervous."
"He seems very quiet," said Frieda Doll, meaning Takeo, "and perhaps
you can get him to dress in men's clothes after you are married."
"Yes, he is quiet and I cannot understand a word he says, so we shall
not quarrel," said Marie Doll.
And so they were married. Jack-in-the-box was the minister, because
the little mistress thought he stood better than anyone else. She put a
black cape on him and a white collar, and Jack behaved in the most
dignified manner.
Little Paper Doll wore a dress that quite outshone the bride's dress, only
no one noticed it; but it was all lace and had tiny little pink buds caught
in the flounces, and she wore a beautiful hat with white feathers.

The bride wore a white dress and a long white veil, and there were tiny
white flowers all around her head which held the veil in place.
But Takeo was far from looking the bridegroom, to Paper Doll's way of
thinking, though Marie Doll gave him no thought at all, for she thought
the bride was the important one, and as she told Frieda Doll, "You have
to have a bridegroom to be a bride, of course; but really he is not of any
importance that I can see."
They had been married a week, and, while Marie talked to Takeo, he,
of course, did not take the least notice of what she said. "Poor fellow,
he cannot understand," said Marie Doll. "He won't be any trouble,
though, because I shall be able to do as I like. He cannot tell me not to."
"These foreigners, my dear," said Paper Doll, "are sometimes
unpleasant to live with. I cannot see how you came to marry him. Do
make him wear men's clothes."
"Oh, I think he looks quite out of the ordinary, and everyone stares at
him when we go out riding in the park with the little mistress," said
Marie Doll. "As I am French, you see we both are foreigners, so that
does not matter; and then, dear, Takeo is so comfortable to live with.
He is no bother at all."
But one night Marie Doll awoke to find her husband quite a different
man from what she thought, for beside her sat two little Japanese dolls.
When the clock struck twelve Marie Doll called to everyone: "Come
quick and see my baby girls!"
"Oh, dear! they look just like Takeo," said Paper Doll. "This place will
be filled with foreigners. It is too bad."
"I shall change their clothes at once," said Marie Doll.