Grandma's garage holds a large mysterious collection of fugitive toys that have not been played with for 25 years, not since my daughter (Mabel's mother) grew out of playing with them. A week ago I discovered the two white horses (big and little) packed away together in a flat cardboard box inside a larger cardboard box inside a wooden trunk. They soaked in hot soapy water for a day or two and came out looking not exactly new, but reasonably clean. Mabel liked them very much. Her mother remembered that the larger white plastic horse originally belonged to the Lone Ranger, who eventually disappeared. The little white horse survived as a friend for the big white horse, though nobody remembers where the little one came from.
My daughter's largo old doll house came out of garage-storage at the same time as the Lone Ranger's Horse and its friend. Everybody expressed surprise that the doll house was in such good shape (though Grandma had done a lot of behind-the-scenes dusting and cleaning and arranging before Mabel was introduced to it).
