Scene: Sitting-room of Alice-Heidi’s House

Alice-Heidi: (enters from hall) O dear! O dear! That child Wendy has left all the scrapbooks all over the floor! She is a nice child to have around, but I do wish she would remember to pick up the things she plays with. Wendy! Wendy! (She goes to the door and calls.)

Wendy: (from upstairs) I’m coming! I’m coming! (Enter Wendy very pink in the face and with an apple in her hand.)

Alice-Heidi: Why will you never walk down the stairs, but always come sliding down the banisters. Your dress is a sight.

Wendy: Because I am in such a hurry to get here. I thought you wanted me.

Alice-Heidi: I do. Now sit on the stool, and don’t break it by tipping on it, and listen to what I have to say. (Wendy sits down meekly.) You know everybody thought I was missing before you came and they suspected a brownie had something to do with it.

Wendy: (opening her eyes wide) You missing!

Alice-Heidi: Yes, they thought I had gone off and somebody else had come to take my place; and of course it was only because the Brownie had made me look like you, because I said I wanted to look as if I were your sister if you were coming to live with me.

Wendy: And everybody says you do look quite like me, only you’re bigger, of course.

Alice-Heidi: Yes, but I’m still I inside, and the question is how to make people believe I am.

Wendy: (frowning) People are so stupid. I don’t know how they ever come to believe anything. Can’t the Brownie help us?

Alice-Heidi: Where is the Brownie? The last I saw of him, he was pulling the tail of the mouse in the cupboard.

Wendy: There he is! Peeking out from under the wing-chair. Come out of there, Brownie! (Alice-Heidi and Wendy pull out the wiggling, squirming Brownie.)

Alice-Heidi: Brownie, now that you have changed me so that I look differently, you’ve got to tell me how I am going to make people know I am the same inside. (The Brownie prances around and winks at Wendy.)

Brownie: (slowly and doubtfully) Of course I can change you back again if you want.

Alice-Heidi: Of course I don’t want to! I never was satisfied with myself, even after my Hallowe’en adventure, and now I am. Of course I don’t want to change again.

Wendy: No, of course she doesn’t want to. I like her just as she is because she is like a big sister to me. (Wendy runs to put her arm around Alice-Heidi.)

Brownie: (scratching his head) Well then, I can’t see but that you will just have to let them think what they want to think.

Wendy: The children will understand, of course; and we don’t care about the grown-ups, because the grown-ups don’t really care about us, since we’re only dolls.

Brownie: Yes, we don’t care about the grown-ups. (Wendy and the Brownie snatch Alice-Heidi by the hand and begin to dance around in a circle, saying:) 

Who cares about the grown-ups?

”Not I,” says the Brownie.

”Not I,” says Alice-Heidi.

”Not I,” says Wendy.

“Not I,” says the mouse in the cupboard.

(They shake the house so that the fire-irons slide down, the flower pots rock on the window-sill, and Alice-Heidi breaks away to save the blue china vase from tipping over.)

Brownie: Then that’s all right! Let’s have crispy pancakes and maple sugar for supper.

From the June 1926 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.