Sooner or later we ate them ourselves, but Madam Liberality kept her
plums for other people.
When the vulgar meal was over--that commonplace refreshment ordained
and superintended by the elders of the household--Madam Liberality
would withdraw into a corner, from which she issued notes of
invitation to all the dolls. They were "fancy written" on curl papers
and folded into cocked hats.
Then began the real feast. The dolls came, and the children with them.
Madam Liberality had no toy tea-sets or dinner-sets, but there were
acorn-cups filled to the brim, and the water tasted deliciously,
though it came out of the ewer in the night nursery, and had not even
been filtered. And before every doll was a flat oyster-shell covered
with a round oyster-shell, a complete set of complete pairs, which had
been collected by degrees, like old family plate. And when the upper
shell was raised, on every dish lay a plum. It was then that Madam
Liberality got her sweetness out of the cake.
She was in her glory at the head of the inverted tea-chest; and if
the raisins would not go round, the empty oyster-shell was hers, and
nothing offended her more than to have this noticed. That was her
spirit, then and always.
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