When dolls Mary Ellen and Gertrude have a tea party...

See another Victorian tea party with Teddy bears here.

       When Mary Ellen and Gertrude take cambric tea together in the garden, they are such a pretty sight that all the little girls who pass, peep at them through the hedge.

       Cambric tea, it should be said, is most excellent tea. It is made by filling a cup almost full of milk. And then a teaspoonful of tea is poured in. And the cambric tea is sweetened to taste. There are all sorts of good things that should be served with cambric tea: muffins, thin bread and butter sandwiches, gooseberry tarts, 'plum tarts, cinnamon toast. Cambric tea is what the little English princesses drink when they play tea party in the royal garden.

       Mary Ellen is the brown-eyed blonde. Gertrude is the blue-eyed brunette. Mary Ellen wears size four-year old dresses and Gertrude still larger.

       The dress that Gertrude is wearing is as pink as the hollyhocks behind her. It is made of a material called lawn. She wears long white lace stockings, the sort that was fashionable when she was young. That was nearly forty years ago.

       Mary Ellen wears a pale blue silk dress, socks and black patent leather slippers. Her things are new.

       She is wearing her daisy chain necklace. The necklace looks as though it is made of daisy blossoms strung on a long piece of grass, but it is small blossoms made of beads.

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