Pretty Polly Perkins

Polly Perkins was a big rag doll, the prettiest, the softest, the most comfortable rag doll that ever belonged to a little girl.

Grandmother King made her for Patty, who was five years old and visiting Grandmother at the time, and this is just how it all happened.

In the first place, Patty fell downstairs. She was on her way to the kitchen where Grandmother was baking a cake, and in her arms she carried Isabel, the doll she loved the very best of all. Indeed, Isabel was the only doll that Patty had brought with her from home. She was a china dolly, with pretty golden curls and blue eyes that opened and shut, and she wore a blue dress with pockets, very much like one of Patty’s own.

[2]Now, as I said, Patty was on her way downstairs with Isabel in her arms when suddenly she tripped and fell. Down the whole flight of stairs she went, bumping on every single step, it seemed, and landed in a little heap at the foot of the stairs.

Grandmother heard the sound of the fall, and came hurrying out of the kitchen with a cup full of sugar in one hand and a big spoon in the other.

‘My precious Patty! Are you hurt?’ cried Grandmother, picking Patty up and rubbing her back and rocking her to and fro all at the same time.

‘No,’ she said, with a little sniff, ‘I think I am not hurt. But where is Isabel?’

Oh, poor Isabel! She lay over by the front door, her head broken into a hundred pieces!

At first Patty couldn’t believe her eyes. Isabel broken! Then whom would Patty play[3] with? Whom would she dress and undress and take out for a walk every day? Who would lie beside her on the bed at night while Grandmother was reading by the lamp downstairs and Patty felt the need of some one to keep her company just before she fell asleep?

She struggled out of Grandmother’s arms to the floor, and there, sobbing and crying as loud as ever she could, she danced up and down. She felt so badly she simply couldn’t stand still.

At first Grandmother didn’t say a word. Very carefully she picked up all that was left of Isabel. Then she took Patty by the hand.

Patty was so surprised to hear Grandmother speak in this way that she did stop crying and stood still.

[4]‘Patty,’ went on Grandmother cheerfully—so cheerfully that Patty couldn’t help listening to what Grandmother had to say—‘Patty, we are going to find a box and put Isabel in it. Then we will send her home to Mother, who will buy a new head for her, I know. We will play that Isabel has been in an accident and that she has gone down South to be cured. That is what Mother did last winter when she was so ill, you remember.’

‘But whom will I play with while she is gone?’ asked Patty with a quiver in her voice. ‘I don’t like Darky. He scratches and spits.’

Darky was a black barn cat who lived next door to Grandmother, and it is quite true that he was not a pleasant playmate for a little girl.

‘There is no one for me to play with but you, Grandmother,’ finished Patty, two plump tears rolling down her cheeks as she thought how lonely she would be now without Isabel.

[5]For a moment Grandmother stood without speaking. She was thinking, her foot softly tapping the floor as Grandmother often did, Patty knew, when she was making up her mind.

‘Patty, I am going to make you a doll,’ said Grandmother, ‘an old-fashioned rag doll such as I used to make for your mother years ago. She always loved hers dearly, and I expect you will, too. And the best of such a doll is that it can never be broken.’

While Grandmother was speaking, Patty’s face grew brighter and brighter, until, as Grandmother finished, she really looked her own merry little self once more.

‘To-day?’ cried Patty hopping up and down, but this time for joy. ‘Will you make her to-day, Grandmother? To-day?’

‘This very day,’ answered Grandmother, picking up her cup of sugar and big spoon from the corner where she had hastily set them down when Patty fell. ‘First, I will finish my cake,[6] and then you and I will go out shopping to buy what we need to make the new doll.’

So a little later Patty and Grandmother, hand in hand, went down the road and round the corner to Mr. Johns’ store, where you could buy almost anything in the world, Patty really believed.

It was the only store in Four Corners, the little village where Grandmother lived, and so of course it kept everything that anybody in Four Corners might want to buy. On one side of the store were rows of bright tin pails, and lawnmowers, and shovels, and rakes, and a case of sharp knives, and a great saw, too, big enough to cut down the largest tree that ever grew. On the other side were dresses and aprons, a hat or two, gay-colored material and plain white, ribbons and laces, needles and pins. There were boxes of soap and boxes of crackers and boxes of matches. There were shelves filled with cans and packages of all shapes and sizes. There was a case full of toys, and a case full of candies, too,[7] where Patty had been known to spend a penny now and then. There were great barrels standing about, and rolls of wire netting, and coils of rope. And on the counter there sat a plump gray cat, who blinked sleepily at Grandmother and Patty as they came in and opened his mouth in a wide yawn.

When Mr. Johns heard what Grandmother was going to make—for Patty told him just as soon as Grandmother had inquired for Mrs. Johns’ rheumatism—he was as interested in the new dolly as Grandmother or Patty herself.

He measured off the muslin with a snap of his bright shears. He whisked out a great roll of cotton batting with a flourish. He helped Patty decide between pink and blue gingham for a dress. She chose pink. And last of all it was Mr. Johns who said,

[8]‘I hadn’t thought yet about hair,’ began Grandmother slowly, when Mr. Johns disappeared beneath the counter.

Patty could hear him pulling and tumbling boxes about, and at last up came Mr. Johns from under the counter with his face very red, indeed, and a smudge of dust on his cheek, but holding in his hand a little brown curly wig.

‘Will that do?’ asked Mr. Johns, smiling proudly at his surprised customers. ‘I knew I had a little wig somewhere, if only I could put my hand on it. It has been lying around here for two years or more.’

Two years old or not, the little brown wig was as good as new, and Patty was so anxious to have the dolly made and to see how the wig would look on her head that she pulled at Grandmother’s hand all the way home and couldn’t help wishing that Grandmother would walk faster or perhaps even run, instead of stopping to chat with her neighbors on the way.

It took a day or two to make the dolly, although[9] Grandmother’s nimble fingers flew. And one night, after Patty had gone to bed, busy Uncle Charles drove down from the Farm and painted the dolly’s face, a pretty face, with rosy cheeks and gentle dark-brown eyes that Patty thought the loveliest she had ever seen.

At last the dolly was finished, and in her gay pink dress, with her soft brown curls that matched her brown eyes, Grandmother placed her in Patty’s outstretched arms.

‘I am so happy,’ said Patty, her face aglow, ‘I am so happy that I don’t know what to do.’

So, standing on tiptoe, Patty first kissed Grandmother and then the dolly and then Grandmother again. And perhaps, after all, that was the very best thing that she could do. Grandmother seemed to think so, at any rate.

‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ said Patty next, holding the dolly out at arm’s length the better to see and admire. ‘Her curls are beautiful, and so are her eyes, and her dress, and her cunning little brown shoes. What shall I name her,[10] Grandmother? Don’t you think she is beautiful? Isn’t she the most beautiful dolly that you have ever seen?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ answered Grandmother, smiling to see Patty’s pleasure. ‘She is as beautiful as a butterfly.’

And the moment it was ended, Patty, her cheeks as pink as the dolly’s and her eyes quite as round and bright, exclaimed,

‘That is my dolly’s name—Polly Perkins! Pretty Polly Perkins! Don’t you think that is a[11] good name for her, Grandmother? Don’t you think Polly Perkins is a good name for my new dolly to have?’

‘A very good name, indeed,’ was Grandmother’s reply. ‘She looks like a Polly to me.’

‘She looks like a Polly to me, too,’ agreed Patty happily, ‘a Polly Perkins.’

‘If Isabel is cured,’ whispered Patty to Polly, ‘I shall be glad that I fell downstairs. Because if I hadn’t fallen, I never would have known you. Wouldn’t you be sorry, Polly Perkins, if you had never known me?’

Patty put her ear close to Polly’s red lips to hear her answer, and she was not disappointed.

Aunt Mary had come down from the Farm to spend the day with Grandmother and with Patty. She had really come to say good-bye, for to-morrow Grandmother’s house at Four Corners would be closed and she and Patty would start for the city, where Grandmother was to spend the winter at Patty’s home.

Aunt Mary had brought presents with her from the Farm, presents that were neatly packed in boxes ready to be placed in Grandmother’s big black trunk.

There was a box of home-made sausages, such as you couldn’t buy in the city no matter how hard you tried. There was a loaf of Father’s favorite cake, ‘raised’ cake it was called, covered over with snowy icing and full of raisins, as Patty well knew. There were two squash pies for Mother, packed so carefully that they[13] couldn’t possibly be broken. Last of all there was a present for Patty that did not have to be packed in a box because it was an apron, a pretty blue pinafore that covered Patty from top to toe, and that had two pockets large enough to hold a handkerchief or a ball or anything else that Patty might choose to put in them. And on each pocket Aunt Mary had embroidered a tiny bunch of orange and yellow and brown flowers.

‘The little flowers look as real as real can be,’ she declared, patting and sniffing the flowers and patting the pockets again. ‘I think they smell sweet, Aunt Mary. I truly think they do.’

Very carefully Patty placed her pinafore in Grandmother’s trunk, and ran to fetch Polly Perkins to show her to Aunt Mary.

‘Uncle Charles painted her. Did he tell you?’ asked Patty, dancing Polly up and down before Aunt Mary until the dolly’s brown curls flew.[14] ‘Isn’t she beautiful, Aunt Mary? Hasn’t she the prettiest eyes, and doesn’t her mouth look smiling? I can brush and brush her hair, too, all I like, and it curls right up again. Isn’t her dress pretty? How I wish she had pockets like my new apron! She would be just perfect if she had pockets on her dress, Aunt Mary.’

‘Run and ask Grandmother for a bit of this pink gingham,’ said good-natured Aunt Mary, ‘and I will make the pockets for you while we all sit here and talk.’

Grandmother shook her head and said that Patty would be spoiled if Aunt Mary were not careful. But she gave Patty the gingham, and a moment later Aunt Mary was measuring and cutting the pockets for Polly Perkins’s dress.

‘Would you like a bunch of flowers or a little rabbit embroidered on each pocket?’ asked Aunt Mary, who was so skillful with her needle that nothing seemed too hard for her to do.

‘I have thought of something, Aunt Mary!’ cried Patty, smiling a wise little smile. ‘I have thought of something so nice. Could you sew Polly’s name on her pockets—Polly on one pocket and Perkins on the other? Could you do that, Aunt Mary, do you think?’

‘Here is some green thread in Grandmother’s basket,’ said she. ‘It will be pretty if I embroider her name in green on the pink dress, don’t you think?’

Patty thought it would be beautiful, and said so. She stood close beside Aunt Mary and watched her take the first stitches in Polly Perkins’s name.

Just at that moment who should drive up to the house but the expressman come for Grandmother’s trunk hours before he had been expected. And then such a hurry and bustle to crowd the last odds and ends into the trunk and[16] to lock it and to strap it, all in the twinkling of an eye.

But at last it was done, and away went the trunk, bumping down the porch steps on the expressman’s back, bumping into the wagon, and bumping off down the road, round the corner, and out of sight.

And then, and not until then, it was discovered that Polly Perkins, pockets and all, had been left behind. There she lay in Aunt Mary’s chair where she had been tossed when the expressman came.

‘Now I can carry her home myself to-morrow,’ said Patty, delighted with this turn of affairs. ‘I can carry her all the way in my arms, can’t I, Grandmother? Do say that I may!’

‘Yes, I suppose that you may,’ answered Grandmother, who did not look so pleased with the plan as did Patty. ‘I am afraid there will not be any room for her in my bag.’

Aunt Mary worked away until the pockets were finished, and when Patty looked at her[17] dolly in her gay pink frock, with a green ‘Polly’ on one pocket and a green ‘Perkins’ on the other, she thought she had never seen anything so pretty in all her life.

Uncle Charles came to supper and to take Aunt Mary home, and, before he was inside the door, Patty was all ready to whisper in his ear and to give him three kisses, one on each cheek and one on his chin.

‘I think you paint the loveliest dollies in the world,’ whispered Patty in Uncle Charles’s ear. ‘And that is why my dolly is named Polly Perkins. Because she is as beautiful as a butterfly. Grandmother said so. And I am going to carry her all the way home in my arms. Grandmother said that, too.’

But the next morning when Patty woke the rain was pouring down, and there was no question, in Grandmother’s mind, at least, about Patty carrying Polly Perkins in her arms.

‘We will send your dolly home in a box by express,’ decided Grandmother. ‘You wouldn’t enjoy carrying her in the rain, I know.’

[18]‘She might catch cold,’ agreed Patty, ‘for she hasn’t any coat. That is the way Isabel went home, in a box, and I expect she enjoyed it, too.’

So Polly was wrapped in a pink-and-blue tufted coverlet, that was to have been used as a traveling-rug, and carefully placed in a large pasteboard box.

‘Be a good girl,’ whispered Patty, tenderly kissing Polly good-bye on her rosy mouth.

Then she watched Grandmother wrap the box in heavy paper and tie it with stout brown twine.

‘I will have my hands full with a bag and an umbrella and a child,’ said Grandmother to Uncle Charles, who had come to take them down to the train. ‘I can’t think of allowing Patty to carry her doll. I have packed it in a box and addressed it to Patty’s mother, and I want you to leave it at the express office as you go home, Charles, if it won’t be too far out of your way.’

Uncle Charles promised to send Polly Perkins[19] along that very day. So, with a farewell pat on the outside of the box that held her dolly, Patty and Grandmother started on their journey in the rain.

It was fun traveling in the rain, Patty thought. She liked to see the people bustling along in the wet. She liked to watch the dripping umbrellas bob in and out of the stations that they passed. She liked the muddy and almost empty roads, with only now and then a procession of ducks waddling along, or a lonely dog trotting by, or a farmer driving into town with perhaps a colt tied at the back of his cart.

As they drew near to the big city, Patty peered out of the misty window-pane over which ran rivulets of raindrops so thick and fast that the tall houses could scarcely be seen and the street-lamps looked like cloudy little suns dotting the way.

And at last Grandmother could answer, ‘Yes,[20] Patty, we are. In five minutes more you will see Father, I hope.’

Grandmother was right. As the train drew into the station and men in little red caps, who wanted to carry your bag, Patty knew, came running down the platform, there on the platform, too, stood Father, and a second later Patty was in his arms.

Through the rain they rode home to Mother, waiting for them in the large white apartment house where Patty lived.

There were many houses on the long city street—tall white apartments, low red-brick houses, then tall white apartments again. Patty pressed her nose against the window of the cab, peering out at the familiar scene.

‘There are our Christmas trees!’ she cried, catching a glimpse of the two little fir trees that, in white flower pots, stood one on either side of the entrance to their apartment house.

Patty pounded on the window of the cab and called and waved. The moment the cab stopped, without waiting for Father’s umbrella, across the sidewalk went Patty with a skip and a jump, up the steps, and into the hall where she flung both arms about Mother’s neck.

‘I knew you would come down to meet me,’ said Patty, giving Mother the tightest squeeze she could and smiling broadly at Thomas over Mother’s shoulder. ‘I have come home, Thomas. I am home.’

Oh, how much there was to tell and to see! Patty’s tongue flew, and her bright eyes glanced hither and thither, and her quick little feet sped up and down the hall and in and out of the rooms she remembered so well.

And in her own room who should be waiting[22] for Patty, sitting in the middle of her very own little bed, but Isabel, home from her trip to the South and as good as new, only perhaps a little prettier than before, Patty thought.

‘Now, Isabel,’ said Patty that night in bed, as Isabel lay where Patty could put out her hand and touch her if she felt at all lonely before she fell asleep, ‘now, Isabel, I must tell you all about your new sister, Polly Perkins. I hope you are going to be good friends. She will be home perhaps to-morrow, perhaps the day after, and I hope you will love her very much indeed.’

Isabel promised that she would. And all the next day—another rainy day, too—she and Patty watched for Polly Perkins, though both Mother and Grandmother said it was far too soon to expect Polly home. All the next day and the next and the next Patty and Isabel watched for Polly, but Polly did not come.

And every night when she went to bed she[23] said, ‘Please wake me up if Polly comes to-night.’

So Grandmother wrote to Uncle Charles to ask if he had forgotten to send Polly. And Uncle Charles wrote back that he had sent her off the very day that Grandmother and Patty left Four Corners.

Next Father went to the express office, and the express office promised to find Polly Perkins, if it possibly could.

‘Perhaps she has been shipped out West. Perhaps she is lying in the Four Corners office,’ said the express people. ‘We will find out and let you know.’

Meanwhile Patty watched, and talked, and wondered what could have become of Polly Perkins.

‘My darling Polly! She is as beautiful as a butterfly, Mother,’ said Patty, not once, nor twice, but many times. ‘You don’t know how beautiful she is. Grandmother thinks so, too.[24] That is why I named her Polly Perkins. She has a pink dress and brown curls and the prettiest brown eyes. And pockets with her name on them, Mother. Just think! I can’t wait to have you see her. I do wish she would come home.’

Patty and Mother and Father and Grandmother all asked these questions over and over and over. But not one of them guessed the answer, though they tried again and again.

While Patty was watching from the window all up and down the long city street, hoping that every passing wagon or automobile would stop at her door with Polly Perkins, what was Polly herself doing all this time?

To begin at the beginning, there is no doubt that Polly was disappointed not to be carried home in Patty’s arms.

‘I would like to see a little of the world,’ thought Polly, when she heard how she was to make the journey, ‘and I would like to ride on the train that Patty talks about. I will be as good as gold, and then perhaps Patty will always take me with her when she goes traveling. Who knows?’

So when Polly saw the rainy day and heard Grandmother plan to send her home in a box, Polly couldn’t help being disappointed, though[26] of course she didn’t show it in the least. She smiled as sweetly as ever when Patty wrapped her in the pink-and-blue tufted coverlet and kissed her good-bye. And though she wanted dreadfully to give the cover of the box just one gentle kick with her pretty brown slipper, to work off a little of her disappointment as it were, still Polly said to herself,

‘No, I won’t kick the box, for I know Patty wouldn’t like it. And I want to please Patty in every way I can.’

For Polly had grown to love Patty in the short time she had lived with her, and she believed that Patty was the very best mother that ever a dolly could have.

‘She might leave me out all night in the grass,’ thought wise little Polly. ‘She might stick pins into me, or pull my hair, or drop me down the well. But she never, never does. Oh, I am glad that Patty is my mother.’

And if, once in a while, Patty gave her a spanking or put her to bed in the middle of the[27] day, why, that was no more than happened to Patty herself, once in a while, and so of course Polly could find no fault.

Polly liked Uncle Charles, too. Hadn’t he given her a pretty face and a sweet smile? So when Uncle Charles tucked Polly under his arm to carry her to the express office, Polly gave one or two gentle bumps on the lid of the box just to show that she was friendly. But if Uncle Charles heard them, no doubt he thought that Polly was simply slipping about, and that he must carry the box more carefully.

It was not pleasant in the express office, Polly found. There was a strong smell of tobacco smoke that sifted straight into Polly’s box, and there seemed to be men all about, with loud voices, who tossed packages back and forth, and hauled heavy boxes from one side of the room to the other. Polly herself was tossed up on a shelf where, after a moment or two, she snuggled down in her coverlet and sensibly fell fast asleep.

[28]She was awakened after a long, long nap by being lifted off the shelf. She thought it must be morning, the express office was so busy and noisy and so many people were hurrying to and fro.

Then came a great roaring and puffing and snorting just outside the office door, and Polly knew in a moment what it was.

‘It is the train,’ thought Polly, who had never heard one before. ‘That is just the sound Uncle Charles made when he played train with Patty the night he came to supper at our house.’

Now the bustling grew greater than before. Trunks and heavy boxes were hoisted aboard the train. Packages, large and small, were flung on helter-skelter, and among them was Polly, who went flying through the air and luckily landed face-up on top of a trunk, where it took a whole moment to get her breath again. But Polly didn’t mind being tossed about, not one bit. She thought it was exciting, and much better[29] than lying in the smoky express office on a shelf.

At first Polly couldn’t hear herself think. But after a short time she grew used to the noise of the train and could hear the different sounds all about her in the baggage car in which she lay.

‘Hens,’ thought Polly, who had often gone with Patty to visit the chicken coops at the back of Grandmother’s yard.

Then she heard a low whining and scuffling as in answer to the outcry of the hens, and the next moment a dog lifted his voice in a series of sharp little barks.

And if Polly could only have looked through[30] her box and seen him, she would have thought that he couldn’t have a better name. For not only was there a gay twinkle in his bright black eye, but the curly tuft of hair on the tip of his tail seemed to twinkle also as he waved it to and fro. While his soft black nose was a shining little spot that might easily have been called a twinkle, too.

‘Bow-wow!’ said Twinkle again. ‘I belong to Jimmy, and Jimmy has broken his leg. Wow! Wow!’

‘Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!’ answered the sympathetic hens. ‘Too bad! Too bad! Too bad!’

‘I wish I could talk to him,’ said Polly to herself. ‘I am going to try.’

So in her politest voice she called out, ‘Twinkle, I am in this box and my name is Polly Perkins. I belong to a little girl named Patty, and I want to talk to you. How did Jimmy break his leg?’

‘On roller skates. Bow-wow!’ answered Twinkle, as though it were the most natural[31] thing in the world to be talking to a dolly wrapped up in a box.

And, come to think of it, Twinkle didn’t know that Polly Perkins was a doll. He only knew that he wanted to tell some one about his little master Jimmy.

‘He was roller skating in the park,’ called out Twinkle, ‘and he fell and broke his leg, and if I had been there it never would have happened.’

‘Did he break his leg all last summer while he was playing with me in the country?’ demanded Twinkle. ‘Of course he didn’t. But no sooner does he go back to the city than he falls and breaks his leg. It all happened because I wasn’t there to take care of him.’

‘Why didn’t you go to the city with him?’ asked Polly next. You see, Patty wasn’t there to tell Polly it wasn’t polite to ask quite so many questions, and Polly was too young to be expected to know that, all by herself.

‘Because his mother said the city was no place for a dog,’ he sniffed scornfully. ‘Just as if I couldn’t behave as well in the city as anywhere else. But they have had to send for me now, for Jimmy wants me. That is where I am going now on the train.’

‘I am going to Patty’s house,’ volunteered Polly Perkins. ‘That is where I am going. Patty couldn’t carry me home yesterday because of the rain.’

‘Cluck-cluck-cluck-ca-da-cut!’ called the hens, not wishing to be left out of the conversation. ‘We are going on a pleasure trip, for pleasure only. We don’t know whether we are coming back or not. We belong to Farmer Hill.’

‘I never heard of Farmer Hill,’ barked Twinkle, ‘but he can’t be as good as Jimmy. Jimmy is the best little boy that ever lived.’

‘He isn’t any better than Patty,’ spoke up[33] loyal Polly. ‘Patty is the best little girl to live with that any dolly ever knew.’

‘Does she throw sticks in the water for you to bring out?’ asked Twinkle. ‘Jimmy does.’

‘Does she run races with you up to the big tree and back?’ asked Twinkle. ‘Jimmy does.’

‘No,’ answered Polly, ‘but she brushes my hair and rocks me to sleep and we often have parties together, Polly and I.’

‘Does she give you chicken bones, always the drumstick and sometimes more?’ asked Twinkle. ‘Jimmy does.’

But before Polly could answer, and indeed at the very mention of chicken bones, all the hens began to squawk and shriek and cluck until the noise grew so disturbing that a trainhand put his head in the doorway of the car to see what was the matter.

You may be sure that Polly and Twinkle made never a sound. So the trainman only[34] shook his cap at the boxful of fluttering hens and called out, ‘S-sh-sh, Biddy, s-sh-sh!’ Then he went away.

No sooner was he gone than the hens began to scold Twinkle, who backed into a corner as far away from them as his rope would allow.

‘Aren’t you ashamed, you greedy dog, to talk about eating chicken bones? Squawk! Squawk!’ chorused the hens. ‘Right to our faces, too! Squawk! He has no feeling! We will never speak to him again. Never, as long as we live! Squawk! Cluck! Cluck!’

Poor Twinkle’s little snub face was all twisted with worry and fear. Why had he mentioned chicken bones? How frightened he felt at these cross hens! He hoped their box was very strong and would not break.

He longed to talk to Polly about it and to tell her how he felt, but he didn’t dare speak another word. Chicken bones so good and sweet! Chicken bones that he had buried in the garden![35] To think that they should cause him so much trouble!

The hens were clucking angrily among themselves. Every now and then one of them would suddenly poke her head out between the bars of the box and dart a bitter glance toward Twinkle.

So Twinkle did the best thing he could think of at the moment. He put his head down between his paws and pretended to go to sleep.

At the very next station the hens were taken off the train. They became so excited that they seemed to forget Twinkle and his chicken bones, and they did not even send him a parting angry cluck.

It would not have made any difference if they had, for Twinkle by that time had really fallen asleep. This Polly knew because she heard him give little snores and happy sighs, so Polly, too, dozed off, which is something travelers often do on long journeys.

Polly woke to find the train standing still,[36] and to hear Twinkle, who was being led away, bark again and again,

Polly herself, after a long, long wait, was tossed into an automobile on top of many other packages, most of them much larger than she, and presently, amid a great tooting of horns, they were off.

Polly knew it was raining, raining hard, for she could hear the steady patter of the raindrops on the automobile roof and the splash of the wheels through the puddles in the street.

Up and down, in and out the city streets they rattled. Over the noisy paving-stones they rolled with many a bump and jolt. Round the corners they whirled with a dash.

[37]Then Polly felt the packages under her slipping. Round a corner they went on two wheels, and out into the street flew Polly in her box to land in a great puddle with a splash!

On whirled the express wagon out of sight, and there lay Polly in the street wondering what in the world would happen to her next.

Anne Marie was lonely. She had no one with whom to play. She had no one with whom to talk.

Over in a corner of the room, her knitting in her lap, Anne Marie’s grandmother, called Grand’mère, napped and woke and napped again. On the mantel-shelf the white marble clock, upon which rode a bright gilt horse and horseman who went nowhere, Anne Marie knew, ticked, ticked, ticked solemnly in the quiet room.

Downstairs in the Bakery, which was owned by Anne Marie’s father, sat Anne Marie’s mother in a gay little golden cage from which she gave change to the customers who filed past her with packages of rolls or cakes or pastries or tarts in their arms.

[39]Anne Marie longed to be downstairs with her mother, whom she called Maman, and who was pretty and smiling, with dark curling hair and bright red cheeks like Anne Marie’s. It was so cheerful and exciting in the Bakery. Anne Marie liked the counters piled high with trays of crisp brown rolls, long loaves of bread, muffins and buns. She liked the cases filled with golden and dark and snow-white cakes, with flaky pastries and tarts. Best of all she liked to watch the people coming and going, ladies and gentlemen, little boys and girls.

But that afternoon Maman had shaken her head when Anne Marie had begged to stay with her in the Bakery.

‘The shop is not so good a place for a little girl as is the home,’ Maman had said, kissing Anne Marie and smoothing back her curls.

Then she had gone downstairs to stay until dinner-time when the shop would close for the evening.

Papa Durant had shaken his head, too, when[40] Anne Marie, an arm about his neck, had whispered that she would like to visit the kitchen that afternoon.

‘Some other time, my little jou-jou,’ Papa Durant had whispered back, ‘some day when we are not so busy. Be a bon enfant and perhaps you may have a tart, a very little tart, for your supper to-night.’

It is not surprising that Anne Marie wished to visit the kitchen. It was a warm, sweet-smelling place, with great ovens filled with goodies and white-clad, white-capped, floury bakers moving steadily about their tasks.

Yes, Papa Durant was justly proud of his kitchen. He was proud of his Bakery, too. He was proud of the great gold-and-black sign, ‘French Pastry Shop,’ that stretched over the Bakery door and directly under the window where Anne Marie now stood.

And Papa Durant was proud of Anne Marie from the crown of her little black curly head to the tips of her twinkling dancing toes. He loved[41] the sparkle in her big black eyes, the dimple in her chin, and her gay little smile.

But this afternoon Anne Marie was not smiling. Not even the promise of ‘a tart, a very little tart’ for her supper could make her feel more cheerful.

For Anne Marie longed for a playmate. She was tired of all her toys. Grand’mère was good to Anne Marie, as good as gold. She knitted for her mittens and stockings without number, and even now was at work upon a scarf for her, a scarlet scarf that matched Anne Marie’s cheeks and would make her look like a Robin Redbreast, so Papa Durant laughingly said. But Grand’mère needed so many naps that she really couldn’t count as a playmate. Even when she told Anne Marie a story, of princesses perhaps and of white cats and a fairy prince, at the most exciting moment Grand’mère would be sure to remember the evening soup that must be prepared and would quite forget about Anne Marie and the fairies.

[42]Now, as Anne Marie stood looking out at the rain, she was thinking, thinking hard.

‘I will think of the naughtiest thing I can do,’ said Anne Marie to herself, ‘and then I will do it.’

‘I will not eat my soup at supper to-night,’ said Anne Marie, smiling at her own naughtiness. ‘I am tired of Grand’mère’s soup. And to-night, when every one sleeps, I will creep downstairs to the Bakery and eat the huge cake in the front window, the white wedding cake with the tiny bride and groom standing arm in arm on top. I will eat it every crumb.’

Anne Marie was so pleased with this idea that there is no telling what fresh piece of mischief she might have planned if at that moment a heavy automobile truck had not come swinging round the corner and dashed up the middle of the street. And even as Anne Marie stared at the truck, glad of something new and exciting[43] to see, there bounced, from the back of the wagon, a box, a large box, that fell with a splash into a puddle directly under the window where Anne Marie stood.

Anne Marie waited for the driver of the truck to run back, pick up his box, and dash off again. But no, the express wagon swung round the corner and out of sight.

Then Anne Marie waited for a passer-by to pick up the box and carry it away. But there were very few passers-by on this wet day, as Anne Marie already knew.

Suddenly a thought came to Anne Marie, a daring thought, that made her cheeks burn and her very curls bob up and down with excitement.

‘I will pick up the box,’ thought Anne Marie, already creeping on tiptoe to the door. ‘That is, if Grand’mère will say I may go down,’ she added, with a hand on the rattling white china doorknob.

‘Grand’mère,’ whispered Anne Marie in the[44] very smallest possible voice, ‘Grand’mère, may I go downstairs after the box?’

Grand’mère did not answer. Her head nodded a little lower, her knitting slipped down in her lap, and her soft breathing was her only reply.

‘Grand’mère is sound asleep,’ said Anne Marie to herself, ‘and I must not wake her. It would not be kind.’

So softly Anne Marie stole down the stairs, softly she opened the door to the street. Then swift as an arrow she darted out into the rain, picked up the box, and darted back into the house again.

She was not wet at all. Surely Grand’mère would not scold. A few raindrops on her hair, a few splashes on her dress. As for her shoes, she rubbed them for a moment on the mat, and lo! they were as dry as dry could be.

Then upstairs crept Anne Marie and into the kitchen. The paper wrapped about the box was wet and torn. Anne Marie pulled it off and [45]crumpled it up. She stuffed it in the coal scuttle. Then she opened the box. She lifted out a soft paper wrapping. She folded back a pink-and-blue tufted coverlet. And there, smiling up into her face, lay the prettiest doll that Anne Marie had ever seen.

Was it Polly Perkins? Why, of course, it was. And very glad indeed of a breath of fresh air, too, as you may well imagine.

Then into the front room she ran, carrying the box in her arms, and plumped it down upon startled Grand’mère’s lap.

‘Look, Grand’mère, look!’ cried Anne Marie, clasping her hands together in excitement and delight. ‘A dolly, a bébé, has come to play with me. Now I shall not be lonely. Now you may nap all you wish and I shall not care. Look, Grand’mère, look! A dolly for me!’

[46]And when, at last, Anne Marie had quite finished telling what had happened, Grand’mère said solemnly,

‘The Saints have sent it to you, Anne Marie. Perhaps because you are a good girl. Undoubtedly the bébé comes from the Saints.’

‘It fell from a wagon, you say,’ repeated Papa Durant. ‘What kind of a wagon? A large wagon? A small wagon?’

‘A large wagon,’ answered Anne Marie, ‘but not so large as the furniture van that carried away Madame Provost’s furniture last week.’

‘That tells nothing,’ said Papa Durant, and forgot all about the dolly in thinking how to make a new tart of raspberries, nuts, and whipped cream.

But when Anne Marie ran to fetch it from the coal scuttle, the paper was not there. Grand’mère[47] had burned it when she put coal on the fire to prepare the evening soup.

‘Enjoy the dolly, then,’ said Maman, ‘since at present we cannot find the owner. Perhaps some day we shall learn to whom the dolly belongs. Here is her name, Anne Marie. Polly, Polly Perkins. It is embroidered on her dress.’

She took off all Polly’s clothes, which rested Polly very much after her long journey, and put on her a nightdress that had once belonged to another doll. Next she wrapped her in the pink-and-blue tufted coverlet and tucked her up for the night on the seat of a soft comfortable chair.

Then Anne Marie, herself ready for bed, knelt beside the chair to say her prayers.

‘The Good God bless Grand’mère and Papa and Maman and everybody,’ said Anne Marie, ‘and bless Polly Perkins too.’

[48]As for creeping downstairs that night, to eat the wedding cake with the tiny bride and groom standing, arm in arm, on top, Anne Marie never thought of it again. Polly Perkins had made her forget all about it.

She was sitting in one corner of the front room—Grand’mère with her knitting in the opposite corner—holding Polly Perkins in her arms and gently singing and rocking her to sleep.

Anne Marie enjoyed a peaceful little time like this. She liked to hear the hiss of the snow against the window-pane. She liked the warm, comfortable feel of Polly in her arms. Above all she liked to look down into Polly’s smiling face because it always made Anne Marie feel like smiling, too.

Now she gave her dolly a tight little hug, and gently placed a kiss on Polly’s red lips.

‘Are you happy, Dearie?’ whispered Anne Marie. ‘I am. Oh, how I hope no one ever comes to take you away from me.’

[50]If Polly could only have spoken, without startling everybody and making them jump, she would have answered truthfully that she was happy, too. Anne Marie had loved her dearly from the very moment that she had first seen Polly, and Polly with her tender heart had soon learned in her turn to love Anne Marie.

But do not think for a moment that Polly had forgotten Patty King. Patty was Polly’s own mother, as it were. She felt toward Anne Marie as one might toward an aunt or a kind cousin or even an older sister or friend. But she still hoped that some happy day she would find herself back in Patty’s arms again.

In the meantime she meant to be as pleasant and as good a dolly as she knew how. So she smiled sweetly and cuddled close as Anne Marie sang softly and rocked her to and fro.

[51]‘Now I will tell you what the song is about, Polly,’ she went on. ‘It is about a little ship that never, never went sailing on the sea.’

There is no doubt that Anne Marie would have told Polly more about this little ship, but just at that moment the front-room door opened and quite unexpectedly in walked Papa Durant. Usually at this hour of the morning he was to be found in the kitchen, giving his orders for the day and watching his bakers step briskly about under his keen eye. But here he was, smiling and rubbing his hands together and even making a little bow every now and then.

‘Come, Anne Marie,’ said Papa Durant, nodding at Grand’mère over Anne Marie’s head and smiling his broadest smile. ‘Together we will go out into the snow and visit the great toyshop near by. There you may choose for yourself any toy that you wish. Any toy, I say. Now run for your hat and coat. Do not keep me waiting, Anne Marie.’

Last night Papa Durant had gone to a wedding.[52] Not as one of the guests, oh, no! Far better than that. Papa Durant had baked the cakes for the wedding, all the little fancy cakes that were to be eaten with ice-cream, and also the great white wedding cake that held the place of honor in the very center of the table, with a tiny bride and groom standing arm in arm on top. Peeping from behind the door, Papa Durant had actually seen the bride stand and cut the beautiful wedding cake into generous slices, and had heard the guests on every side say that never before had they tasted such delicious cake.

So this morning Papa Durant felt very happy, and naturally enough he wanted to make Anne Marie happy too.

Through the whirling, twirling snowflakes they trudged hand in hand to the great store near by, that was really two stores connected by a little bridge high in the air. And there, in the busy, bustling toy department, crowded with Christmas shoppers, for ‘Noel,’ as Anne[53] Marie called it, was not many days away, and, surrounded by every kind of a toy that ever was invented, Anne Marie made her choice.

What did she choose, do you think? A sled! A gay yellow-and-red sled, with its name ‘Lightning Flash’ painted in bold black letters on the seat.

Why, out of all these hundreds and hundreds of toys, did Anne Marie choose a sled? I will tell you. It was because she saw two little boys buying a sled exactly like the one she later chose. And they were so happy and excited and smiling over their purchase that Anne Marie felt that a sled was the very finest toy that any one could have.

So the sled was bought, and Anne Marie rode home in triumph on it, drawn by Papa Durant, who then disappeared into the kitchen and left Anne Marie to play alone.

Not really alone, however, for up in one front window sat Grand’mère, nodding and smiling out at Anne Marie, and in the other window[54] was perched Polly Perkins, who couldn’t have looked more interested if she had been a real little girl. Once, too, Maman actually stepped out of her golden cage for a moment and waved her hand and blew a kiss as she watched Anne Marie run up and down the street.

By-and-by it stopped snowing, and then Polly Perkins came out for a ride. Snugly wrapped in the pink-and-blue tufted coverlet she rode smilingly up and down, lying flat on the sled, staring up at the sky, and enjoying it all without any doubt.

Anne Marie enjoyed it too. She grew so bold that she could run and slide with the sled, run and slide again. It was great fun.

But presently along came a dog, a brown shaggy dog, who wore a collar ornamented by a bell. The dog thought it was fun, too, to run after the sled. He ran and barked, ran and barked, and every now and then he would jump up in the air and whirl around in the snow, he felt so happy and gay.

[55]He didn’t dream for a moment that Anne Marie was afraid of him, but she was. She ran so fast up the street and even round the corner to get away from the dog that the sled swung from side to side. It bumped about, it twisted to and fro.

Finally the dog, with one last joyous bark and whirl, trotted off to tell his nearest neighbor, a white, fluffy dog, who only walked out on a leash, what a pleasant time he had had playing in the snow.

Then Anne Marie, stopping to catch her breath, turned about and discovered that Polly Perkins was gone! The sled was empty, and along the whole length of the long city block Polly was not to be seen.

This was too dreadful! Anne Marie pressed her red-mittened hands together hard. What should she do? She wanted to sit down on the sled and cry, but she knew that was not the way to find Polly Perkins.

To and fro ran Anne Marie in the snow, hunting[56] for Polly Perkins. Up and down the street she went again and again, looking from side to side. But her search was in vain. Polly was not lying in the snow. She had not been tossed out into the street. There was not a trace left of Polly Perkins. There was not a glimpse to be seen of her pretty pink dress nor of the tufted pink-and-blue coverlet in which she had been so warmly wrapped. Anne Marie could scarcely believe it, but it was true. Polly was gone.

Anne Marie went home in tears. They rolled so fast down her cheeks that the gay red mittens could not wipe them away. And once home she could hardly tell what had happened, she was so choked with sobs.

Every one was sorry for Anne Marie. Papa Durant left his baking, though there were pastries in the oven, and went out to look for Polly Perkins in the snow. Maman drew Anne Marie into the golden cage, and, smoothing back her curls, not only whispered that Noel was near and that the little Noel might possibly place[57] another bébé in Anne Marie’s shoe, but she also slipped a rich yellow sponge cake into the little girl’s hand.

‘Do not weep, Anne Marie. The Saints will bring back your bébé,’ declared Grand’mère, so distressed at Anne Marie’s sorrow that she dropped three stitches in her knitting, a thing she had never been known to do before.

Then Grand’mère laid aside her knitting and took Anne Marie upon her lap, and told her the fairy story of the White Cat, without once stopping to go and prepare the evening soup.

But even all this kindness could not console Anne Marie for the loss of Polly Perkins.

Sadly the bright new red-and-yellow sled was left standing in the lower hall behind the door to the street. Anne Marie could play no more that day. Her heart was too heavy.

When at last bedtime came and Anne Marie in her nightgown knelt at Grand’mère’s knee, her prayer was very short.

[58]‘May the Good God and all the Saints remember how lonely I am and please send Polly Perkins home to me again,’ prayed little Anne Marie.

Wee Ailie McNabb was going shopping, and shopping all alone. She held five cents tight in her little red hand, as she tucked the old plaid shawl snugly along Granny’s back and softly patted Granny’s shoulder by way of saying good-bye.

Granny and Ailie lived together in one small room at the very tiptop of a tall, tall building. Indeed, the building was so high that, looking from the window, Ailie felt very near the clouds in the sky and the birds that sometimes flew past. While at night it almost seemed as if, by putting out her hand, she might draw the glittering moon and stars down into the room that Ailie called home.

But there had been little time lately for looking out of the window. Granny was ill, with a troublesome cough, and Ailie had been obliged[60] to take care of Granny, and run all the errands, and even now and then to cook the ‘porritch,’ which was often all she and Granny ate nowadays for breakfast, dinner, and supper.

Now Ailie, still clutching her precious five cents, took a small tin pail from the table, and with a last gentle pat on Granny’s shoulder tip-toed from the room.

Down the four long flights of stairs she climbed, and, opening the door to the street, stepped out into the cold.

The wind whistled and sang a wintry tune, and Ailie gave a little shiver as her short skirt flapped about her knees. Ailie’s coat was thin. There was a hole in the side of her shoe. But she wore a warm tam-o’-shanter hat that pulled down nicely over her ears, and though she owned no mittens, of course she could always draw her hands up inside her coat-sleeves.

Ailie was going for a bit of milk. Not only did it taste ‘rare fine’ poured over the ‘porritch,’ as Ailie was often heard to say, but[61] Granny could sometimes take a sip of milk when she could touch nothing else.

Swinging her pail, Ailie skipped along the snowy street to the grocery store. Closely she watched the pouring of the milk from the tall can into her little pail, for Ailie was a good shopper. Granny herself said it, so of course it must be true.

Then, making sure that the cover of her pail was on firm and tight, Ailie started for home.

She was walking slowly, carefully balancing her pail, for she did not mean to spill one single drop of milk, when, only a step or two from her own doorway, she saw lying before her on the sidewalk a beautiful big rag doll.

Ailie set her pail down in the snow and picked up the dolly. Then she turned and looked up and down the long city street.

At one end of the block was a boy shoveling snow. Clearly he had not lost a doll. Two men were walking toward Ailie. Their coat-collars were turned up about their ears, their hands[62] were thrust deep into their overcoat pockets, and they were talking so busily as they passed that they did not even give Ailie a glance.

If Ailie had gone down to the corner and there looked up the street, she would have seen a little girl—Anne Marie, of course—running wildly along, a friendly little brown dog leaping and whirling at her side. And if Ailie, a few moments later, had peered from her window, though, to be sure, it was so high that it was hard to see the street, she might have spied Anne Marie searching, with tears in her eyes, for her lost Polly Perkins. If she had done those things, it is very likely that Anne Marie would not have gone crying to bed that night.

But Ailie did not think of going down to the corner. Neither did she look from the window when she had hastily climbed the four flights of stairs, with the pail of milk in one hand and the beautiful dolly tenderly clasped in the other arm.

‘Eh, my good little Ailie,’ whispered Granny, opening her eyes and trying to smile as Ailie [63]held Polly Perkins up before her and told how she had found her lying in the snow, ‘sit ye doun and rock your bairn the while I sleep again to ease the cough.’

So down before the stove sat Ailie with Polly in her lap. First of all she unfastened the pink-and-blue coverlet that had been pinned about Polly’s shoulders as a shawl. And then, oh! how Ailie admired Polly’s pretty pink dress with the pockets, and her neat brown slippers, and her soft glossy curls.

‘Once I had a blue dress like yours,’ murmured Ailie to Polly, as she settled her in her lap and gave her a little hug, ‘but it was a long while ago before Granny and I were alone. It may have been that my mither made it for me, but I cannot just remember how it was.’

Of course Polly didn’t answer. But there was a look in her brown eyes that did almost as well as if she had spoken, and Ailie did not ask for anything more.

‘My Aunt Elspeth is coming soon,’ went on[64] Ailie in such a low voice that it did not disturb Granny in the least. ‘My Aunt Elspeth is coming to take care of Granny and me. She is coming in a big ship from Scotland. She wrote Granny a letter to tell her so. And when she comes she will cure Granny’s cough and make a new dress for me, maybe, just like yours.’

It was such a comfort to talk, and to talk to some one who really seemed to care as Polly did, that Ailie couldn’t and didn’t think of stopping.

‘This is what I would like best of all,’ she went on, her sandy curls standing out all round her head and her honest Scotch blue eyes growing bright as she talked. ‘It is a secret, but I will tell it to you. I would like a mither, a pretty mither all my own, and she would wear a real silk dress every day. And I would like a father who would put his hand in his pocket and pull me out a penny just as if it were nothing at all. And I would like four little brothers and four little sisters to play with me, and we would be[65] happy all day long. Aye, I would like that fine, wouldn’t you?’

It really seemed as if Polly Perkins answered ‘yes.’ At any rate, Ailie was so delighted with the dolly that she fell asleep at night with a smile on her face, a smile that cheered Granny greatly and almost made her feel better as she turned and tossed and coughed the long night through.

But in the morning Granny was not so well, and Mrs. McFarland, who lived downstairs, put a shawl over her head and stepped out for the doctor.

‘You need good food and rest, Mrs. McNabb, and take this medicine that will cure your cough in a wink,’ said the cheerful doctor.

She told the friendly druggist all about Granny and about Polly, too. Then she started for home.

She hurried along, holding Polly close, and as[66] she hurried a little girl, in a bright red scarf and red mittens, with a sled at her heels, suddenly stood before her and caught Polly almost out of her arms.

‘It is my doll! It is my doll!’ the little girl was saying over and over again.

When Ailie heard those words, and knew that the little girl meant to take Polly away from her, if she could, would you believe it, Ailie didn’t care at all whether the dolly had once belonged to this strange little girl or not. She only knew that she wanted with all her heart to keep the dolly for her own, and that she simply could not bear it if she had to give her up.

So she held tight to Polly Perkins, as tight as ever she knew how, and the strange little girl pulled and tugged with all her might and main. And while they were struggling, with their faces very red and their lips shut very tight, along the street came two ladies and another little girl.

They stopped, at least the little girl did, and[67] in a moment the little girl began to jump up and down, her brown hair flying, and to call out in a shrill little voice,

‘It is Polly! It is my Polly Perkins! Mother! Grandmother! It is my Polly Perkins!’

There is no telling how this tug of war might have ended, three little girls pulling away at poor Polly Perkins, if Ailie had not dropped Granny’s bottle of medicine in the snow.

‘Och me!’ cried Ailie, and let go of Polly at once. Granny must have her medicine, even though it meant that Ailie would never hold Polly in her arms again.

Fortunately the bottle was not broken. And by the time Ailie had picked it up, one of the ladies, the taller one, who later proved to be Grandmother King, had stepped forward and taken Polly Perkins out of the hands of Anne Marie and of her little granddaughter, Patty King.

‘Let me see the doll, children,’ said Grandmother quietly. ‘I can tell in a moment, Patty, whether it is your Polly Perkins or not, for I made her, you know.’

[69]Of course it was Patty’s Polly Perkins. It took only a glance to tell Grandmother so. But once that point was settled, Grandmother looked at the three little girls standing before her and scarcely knew what to do or say next.

For each little girl wanted Polly Perkins, oh! so badly. You could tell it only to look at them, though no one said a word.

Patty’s arms were stretched out toward Polly, and there was a look of surprise on her face as if she couldn’t understand why Grandmother didn’t give her the dolly that had been made expressly for her.

Anne Marie had clasped her red-mittened hands tightly together, her eyes were big and round, and she looked as if in one moment more she would sit right down on the sidewalk and begin to cry.

While Ailie, clutching her bottle of medicine close, pressed her lips together in a thin little line and winked her blue eyes as fast as ever she could.

‘Well,’ spoke Grandmother at last, with a smile straight into the eyes of each little girl, ‘well, I have often heard of one mother with three children, but I never before knew of three mothers and only one child.’

At this Patty and Anne Marie each mustered up a faint smile, but not Ailie. This was no time for smiling, thought she.

‘Now I know one of you mothers well,’ went on Grandmother in her pleasant voice. ‘It is my own little granddaughter Patty, for whom I made this dolly when she was paying me a visit not long ago. But won’t you two little girls tell me who you are and how you both happen to think that Polly Perkins belongs to you?’

‘I am Anne Marie Durant,’ said she, making a polite little curtsy to Grandmother as Maman had taught her to do, ‘and my papa owns the[71] Bakery down there on the corner. “French Pastry Shop” the sign says over the door. And one rainy day I was looking from the window. We live just over the shop, you know, Papa and Maman and Grand’mère and I. And I saw a box fall from a wagon. No one came for the box, there it lay in the rain, so I ran down and picked it up, and in the box was Polly Perkins. We could not find to whom the box belonged. Grand’mère had burned the paper wrapped about it. And so I kept Polly Perkins. Grand’mère said, too, the Saints had sent her to me. And yesterday I lost her, lost her from this sled. And that is all,’ said Anne Marie, quite out of breath, finishing off her long speech with another little curtsy and a smile.

‘I know your Bakery well, Anne Marie,’ said Patty’s mother. ‘I go there almost every day, I think.’

It was now Ailie’s turn to speak, and speak she did, but her voice was so low that she could scarcely be heard.

[72]Grandmother managed to understand her, however, and when Ailie had finished her story, Grandmother drew her close to her side and patted her softly upon the shoulder.

‘Of course I understand just how it was,’ said Grandmother kindly. ‘Anne Marie lost Polly yesterday in the snow and Ailie picked her up. In a way Polly Perkins does belong to each one of you three little girls. Now let me think for a moment.’

Grandmother stood quite still, with her foot tapping the sidewalk in a way that Patty knew very well. Without a doubt Grandmother was making up her mind about something.

Then Grandmother took Mother by the arm and walked up the street with her, talking busily all the while.

Patty and Anne Marie and Ailie stared at one another, already looking much happier, all three, and even smiling a little now and then. For somehow they all felt that Grandmother was going to make everything come out right,[73] though how she would do it they didn’t even try to guess.

Grandmother still held Polly Perkins in her arms, and over Grandmother’s shoulder Polly smiled sweetly down in a way that was pleasant to see. Patty couldn’t help thinking that Polly’s brown eyes held a special look for her. But then who knows that Anne Marie and Ailie were not thinking the very same thing?

‘Remember,’ Mother was saying with a shake of the head, ‘that Christmas is only one week away.’

‘I know it,’ answered Grandmother, who no longer tapped her foot, ‘but I have done much harder things than this. Besides, you will help me, I am sure.’

What did Grandmother mean? The children couldn’t imagine, nor did they have time to try.

For Grandmother had made up her mind[74] what she meant to do, and at once she started Mother and Patty and Anne Marie off for the Bakery, and Grandmother and Polly Perkins and Ailie set out for Ailie’s house.

Now this is a strange thing, but one quite apt to happen in a large city. It turned out that Patty and Anne Marie and Ailie lived almost within a stone’s throw of one another.

It was this way. On the corner of two streets lived Anne Marie, upstairs over her Bakery, as you know. On one of these two streets, in her large white apartment house, lived Patty. On the other of these streets, at the tiptop of her tall, tall building, lived wee Ailie McNabb.

Well, Mother and Patty and Anne Marie went straight to the Bakery, and there it was discovered that Maman knew Mrs. King very well. Had not Mrs. King for years bought her rolls and bread, her cakes and tarts, at the ‘French Pastry Shop’? Out of the golden cage stepped Maman. Papa Durant was sent for and hastily came up from the kitchen, bowing[75] and smiling and rubbing his hands as he always did when very well pleased.

The story of Polly Perkins was told from the very beginning, and then Mother delivered Grandmother’s invitation, that came as a great surprise to the little girls who heard it.

‘Might Anne Marie come to spend the afternoon with Patty on Christmas Eve? The hour, four o’clock.’

‘Certainly, certainly,’ answered Maman and Papa Durant. ‘We shall be only too delighted to accept for Anne Marie.’

Down at the end of the street, Grandmother, holding Ailie’s little red hand, slowly climbed the four long flights of stairs that led to Ailie’s home.

Into the poor little room stepped Grandmother, at once setting startled Granny McNabb at ease by her smile and pleasant manner, even before she had time to explain what errand had brought her there.

[76]‘Take a spoonful of this medicine before we say a word, Mrs. McNabb,’ said Grandmother, placing a chair close by Granny’s side, ‘for Ailie tells me it will cure your cough as quick as a wink.’

By the time Grandmother had finished her talk and was ready to go, she and Granny McNabb had become good friends.

‘You must let me look after you a bit until Aunt Elspeth’s ship comes in,’ said Grandmother, as she was leaving. ‘We live only around the corner and are neighbors, you know. At least we would be neighbors if we were out in the country, where I live most of the year. I shall bring around to-day the broth I told you of, that helped me when I had a cough like yours. And I am sure that my little granddaughter Patty has a number of outgrown clothes that will fit your good wee Ailie here.

And Grandmother, still carrying Polly Perkins,[77] went carefully down the stairs, leaving Ailie to rush back into the room to tell Granny over and over again just how it had all happened.

‘She is a grand good friend,’ said Granny with a nod of her head. ‘You can read it in her face.’

Patty was so surprised at everything that had happened that she didn’t know what to think.

You may imagine how surprised she felt to see her own dear lost Polly Perkins being almost pulled apart in the street by two strange little girls. But you may also imagine her surprise to find on reaching home that Grandmother had carried Polly into her own room and that Patty was not to see her at all.

‘It is Christmas time, Patty,’ said Mother with a smile. ‘Remember Grandmother’s Christmas Party and be patient and wait.’

That was all Mother would say to Patty about it, and Grandmother told her even less. Indeed, Grandmother now spent most of her time shut in her own room, while Mother went about with a smile on her face, closing closet doors that would pop open and whisking parcels[79] into bureau drawers so that Patty might not see.

In a day or so Patty began to smell a Christmas Tree, but though she searched and searched she could find no trace of one.

‘But I know I smell a Christmas Tree, Isabel,’ confided Patty to her doll. ‘Don’t you? And don’t you want to see Polly Perkins the worst way now that she is in the house with us? I don’t see how I can ever wait for Grandmother’s Party, Isabel. Oh, how I wish Christmas Eve was this very, very minute.’

But there was so much Christmasing going on in Patty’s house, these days, that really the time passed quickly, after all.

One night Father went into Grandmother’s room straight from dinner, and though the door was shut tight and even locked, Patty could hear Father laugh, great big laughs over something so funny that it made Patty smile, too, though she couldn’t guess what the joke was about. She even lay on the floor and tried to peep under[80] Grandmother’s door, but she couldn’t see a thing, not even feet. When Father came out, his fingers were stained the strangest colors, and there was a great streak of red on his cheek. But still Patty couldn’t imagine what he had been doing.

One day Mother went out shopping, and came home with her arms full of queer knobby bundles. Another day Grandmother went, and brought home any number of packages, large and small, that were whisked out of sight before Patty could take so much as a peep. And every night, when Father came home, Patty was shut in the dining-room until Father’s pockets were emptied and their contents hidden away.

But at last the day of Grandmother’s Party came, Christmas Eve, bright and frosty and clear.

‘I promised Mother we wouldn’t peek, Isabel,’ said Patty, ‘and neither will we listen.’

[81]So over her head Patty tied a scarf, while Isabel had a little shawl pinned under her chin that shut out every sound that could possibly drift into the room.

‘We look like beggars,’ said Patty, ‘but I don’t care. You are such a good child, Isabel, that you shall come to the party, too, just as if you were a real little girl.’

And so Isabel did. For when four o’clock came, time for the party to begin, there sat Isabel on the dining-room table dressed in her best, which of course was her one blue dress, but with clean face and hands and shining hair, waiting for the guests to arrive.

By this time Patty couldn’t sit still a minute. She fluttered up and down the hall and in and out of the dining-room. She straightened Isabel’s dress and smoothed her curls over and over again. A half-dozen times she thought she heard the doorbell ring. A half-dozen times she opened the door only to find no one there.

But at last the bell did ring. It was Anne[82] Marie, her black eyes big and bright and her cheeks as red as the little scarlet frock she wore. Papa Durant had brought her, and had left in her arms a huge box which Anne Marie put into Grandmother’s hands with her very best curtsy and smile.

It was a box of cakes, French Christmas cakes, covered with sugar frosting, pink and green and white, and on many of them appeared the words ‘Joyeux Noel,’ which was Anne Marie’s French way of saying ‘Merry Christmas.’

Then in came wee Ailie McNabb, warmly dressed not only in a blue coat that Patty had outgrown, but also in a neat little frock that had once belonged to Patty, it is true, but that fitted wee Ailie McNabb as if it had been made for her.

Straight up to Grandmother walked Ailie and stretched out a small foot clad in a glossy brown shoe.

[83]‘They are fine and warm,’ said Ailie, just as if Grandmother knew all about them, as no doubt she did.

It was time then for the front-room door to be opened. And fortunately Father now came home from the office, for Patty felt that not even a Christmas Party would be quite perfect unless Father were there to enjoy it too.

So the front-room door was thrown open and in they went, first Anne Marie and Ailie and Patty, carrying Isabel, and then Grandmother and Mother and Father close behind.

The first thing they saw, that filled all one side of the room, was—well, can’t you guess? A Christmas Tree! A great, shining Christmas Tree that touched the ceiling of the room and spread out its branches far and wide on either hand. A great, shining Christmas Tree, covered with glittering balls and bells and chains, with beautiful stars and candles of every hue.

But, would you believe it, though it was by[84] far the gayest, prettiest sight that Patty or Anne Marie or Ailie had ever looked upon, after the first glance the three little girls did not look at the Tree at all.

They were looking at something under the Tree, at something so delightful, so exactly what they wanted to see, that they simply could not look at anything else.

For each little girl was looking at Polly Perkins sitting under the Tree. But instead of one Polly Perkins there were three!

Yes, actually three Polly Perkinses, looking exactly alike, with gentle brown eyes and pretty pink cheeks and glossy brown curls. And each Polly Perkins wore a sweet, sweet smile. There were the three pink dresses, the three pair of neat brown slippers, too.

Down on the floor before one Polly Perkins went Patty King, down went Anne Marie Durant before another, and last of all down[85] went Ailie McNabb before the third Polly Perkins sitting under the Tree.

Then Grandmother stepped forward and placed a dolly in each of the little girls’ arms.

‘This is your dolly, Anne Marie,’ said Grandmother, her face as bright as that of the little girls. ‘Her name is on her apron—Polly Perkins Durant. And here is your doll, Ailie, with Polly Perkins McNabb embroidered on her apron, too. And here, my Patty, is your own dolly back again, with Polly Perkins King on her apron for every one to see.’

Sure enough, each dolly wore a pinafore, a fine white pinafore, too, and across the hem, in the neatest stitches ever seen, ran each dolly’s name, just as Grandmother said.

And over each dolly’s arm was flung a cape, a cape with a hood, and as soon as they were tried on, it was seen that they were the most beautiful capes that had ever been made.

Patty’s Polly wore a brown cape and hood, edged with beaver fur, and lined with a lovely[86] rose-colored silk. Anne Marie’s Polly wore a gray cape and hood, trimmed with soft black fur, and lined with a pale shade of blue, while Ailie McNabb’s Polly wore a dark blue cape and hood, edged with squirrel fur, and lined with the gayest Scotch plaid silk that Grandmother could find in all the city of New York.

At first the little girls couldn’t speak a word. They could only look and look, each one at her own Polly Perkins.

Then Patty turned and said, ‘Oh, Grandmother!’ and flung both arms about Grandmother’s neck and gave her a mighty hug. Next, to every one’s surprise, shy little Ailie did the same. And last of all Anne Marie stepped up and not only gave Grandmother a polite little hug, but dropped her a curtsy and placed a kiss on her hand as well.

‘Merci, Madame, merci,’ said Anne Marie, so excited that, for the moment, she quite forgot how to speak English.

‘Isabel,’ then cried Patty, turning to the[87] table where Isabel had been hastily set down, ‘Isabel, look at Polly Perkins, do! Isn’t she a sister that you are proud to have? Oh, how glad I am that Polly is home with us at last!’

Ailie slipped a little hand into Grandmother’s and smiled up into her new friend’s face.

‘’Tis rare fine,’ whispered Ailie, pointing to the gay Scotch plaid lining in her dolly’s cape, ‘and Granny will be saying so, too, I’m thinking. The prettiest one of all.’

Holding their dollies the little girls could now turn their attention to the Tree.

It really seemed as if all the bright, sparkling, glittering objects in the world had been brought together and hung upon this Tree for Grandmother King’s Christmas Party.

Chains and balls, flowers and fruit, icicles and snowballs, all in gold and silver, rose and blue, scarlet and green, swung and bloomed on the thick, sweet, green boughs. There were gay cornucopias filled to the brim. There were chocolate roosters and chickens and ducks.[88] There were pink-and-white peppermint baskets and canes and hats. There were fairy ships, and a parrot in a cage, and wee birds in a nest, and two little babies asleep in a cradle, side by side. And over all, on the topmost bough, there shone a great silver star, that seemed to glow with as pure and clear and frosty a light as that of any real star in the sky on this Eve of Christmas Day.

Then came ice-cream—for Grandmother said it wouldn’t be a real party without ice-cream—and Anne Marie’s Christmas cakes, oh, so good! And candy, as much as you could eat. And last of all, you might choose whatever you would, to keep, from off the Christmas Tree.

Patty chose the two little babies asleep in the cradle, Anne Marie chose a silver-and-white fairy dancer, and Ailie’s choice was the bright little red-and-green parrot swinging in his cage.

[89]Papa Durant came to take Anne Marie home, and bowed and smiled and rubbed his hands together when he heard the praises of his Christmas cakes, and saw Polly Perkins Durant held in happy Anne Marie’s arms.

Thomas, the hall boy, who had brought wee Ailie McNabb to the party, was to take her home again.

But just at the last moment, Patty asked a question that made every one at the Party stand still and think.

‘What will Santa Claus say to-night when he sees three Polly Perkinses?’ asked Patty.

That is something you and I will never know, unless some day one of the Polly Perkinses opens her lips and tells.

For, of course, no one saw Santa Claus that Christmas Eve. Neither Patty, nor Ailie, nor Anne Marie, nor any one of the hundreds and hundreds of little boys and girls who meant to lie awake that night and steal a glimpse of Santa Claus, or at least hear the patter of his reindeer’s hoofs or catch the faintest tinkle of their bells.

To be sure, there was one moment the next day when she thought it might have been all a dream. But that moment was very short, indeed. And finally Anne Marie made up her[91] mind that not only had she seen the Christmas Angel, but that the Angel had bent over her bed and had smilingly given her a gentle Christmas kiss.

When Anne Marie, holding fast to Papa Durant’s hand, walked home from the Party, although the walk was a short one, she managed to tell him everything that had happened, from the moment she had presented her Christmas cakes to Grandmother King until Papa Durant himself had come to take her home.

She scarcely glanced up at the deep-blue starry sky. She scarcely noticed the happy people, laden with bundles, who hurried to and fro in the gay and frosty street.

Once home, she could scarcely eat her supper, so eager was she to tell Grand’mère all about the Christmas Party and to display the new Polly Perkins Durant in all her beauty of fresh pink frock and gray cloak and hood.

‘This cape is worthy of Paris,’ pronounced Grand’mère, after carefully examining not only[92] the cape, but the pale blue lining as well. And this, from Grand’mère was praise indeed, as Anne Marie well knew.

It seemed very hard that Anne Marie could not tell Maman all about her happy afternoon, nor even show to her Polly Perkins Durant.

But Christmas Eve was a busy night in the Bakery, and Maman would sit late in her little golden cage, not leaving it until Anne Marie had long been abed and asleep. Of course, their friends and patrons must have their Christmas cakes and pastries, their Christmas buns and rolls. Anne Marie would not have had it otherwise.

‘But I would like to slip downstairs just for a moment to show my Polly to Maman,’ coaxed Anne Marie, leaning across her bowl of bread and milk to pat Grand’mère upon the cheek.

‘That would not please Maman,’ was Grand’mère’s answer, and Anne Marie knew it was[93] true. ‘You may show her your Polly to-morrow morning when you wish her “Joyeux Noel.” Maman left a message for you, Anne Marie. She said that you might go into her bedroom and look at her ball dress that is lying on the bed, but that you must not touch it. Wait, Anne Marie, wait for me.’

For already Anne Marie had slipped from her chair, and with Polly in her arms was hurrying down the hall toward Maman’s bedroom.

‘You did not know it, Polly,’ said Anne Marie as she went, ‘but to-night Papa and Maman go to the ball. And of all the lovely ladies who will be there to-night, in pink and blue dresses, in scarlet and white, Maman will be the loveliest of them all. Papa has told me this, but I already knew it myself before he told me. And now we are to see her dress, her new ball dress that she has never worn.’

The new ball dress lay spread out upon the bed. It was white, soft and filmy white, and trimmed with delicate silver lace.

[94]Not for anything in the world would Anne Marie have so much as laid a finger upon it. It was far, far too beautiful for any little girl to touch.

Beside the dress lay the softly gleaming silver slippers that Maman was to wear. And there, too, oh, how lovely! was the wreath of tiny silver flowers that would rest like a crown on Maman’s dark curling hair.

Grand’mère nodded, smiling all the while, and in silence she and Anne Marie stood looking at the bed.

‘I know,’ said Anne Marie suddenly, ‘I know whom Maman will be like. She will be like my little fairy dancer, only, of course, much more beautiful. Come, Grand’mère! Come and see my fairy dancer. She, too, is all silver and white. See her dance, Grand’mère! See her whirl! I can do that too.’

And, holding Polly’s hands, Anne Marie[95] whirled and twirled like her little fairy dancer until both she and Polly fell in a heap to the floor.

‘It is now time for bed,’ said Grand’mère, ‘and there is much for you to do to-night before you go to sleep.’

In less time than you might think, Anne Marie was washed and brushed and in her nightgown, almost ready for bed.

Almost ready for bed, but not quite. For it was Christmas Eve, remember, and although Anne Marie was not going to hang up her stocking, she was going to leave her shoe beside the hearth.

And would the little Noel fill a shoe as surely as Kris Kringle would stuff a stocking with toys and goodies of every kind?

He had done it over and over for Papa and Maman when they were little children in far-away France. He had done it for Grand’mère in that long-ago time when she was a little girl[96] like Anne Marie. Indeed, without doubt, he would do it that very night for those little children in France and elsewhere who believed in him and who left one of their shoes beside the hearth for him to fill.

‘Shall I take one of my best shoes, Grand’mère?’ asked Anne Marie, ‘my shiny shoes with the gray tops? Or would you take one of my everyday brown shoes, do you think?’

‘The best shoe, perhaps,’ answered Grand’mère, ‘though little Noel is not one to scorn a shabby shoe.’

‘Then I will take my everyday shoe,’ decided Anne Marie, after a moment’s thought. ‘It is not kind on Christmas Eve to take the best shoe because it is the prettiest. Sometimes the shiny shoes pinch me, and the brown ones never do. Then, too, the brown shoe is the larger,’ added Anne Marie.

Down beside the hearth went the brown shoe[97] to wait for little Noel, and Anne Marie made ready to light her Christmas candle.

‘This is for the little Noel,’ Anne Marie told Polly softly, as Grand’mère in the window pinned the curtains safely back and raised the shade. ‘He will come to earth to-night, and in the dark and cold my candle in the window may be the very light he needs to guide him on his way.’

The candle lighted and Anne Marie tucked in bed, Grand’mère put out all other lights and crept away.

Beside the bed on a chair sat Polly Perkins, holding the little fairy dancer in her lap.

Of course, Anne Marie meant not to go to sleep. She meant to stay awake and at least hear the little Noel moving about, even though she were not able to have a peep at him. Perhaps, too, Maman would come in to say good-night before she went to the ball.

[98]‘Dear little Christ Child, dear little Noel,’ thought Anne Marie drowsily. ‘Will he see my candle, I wonder, to-night? Will he come down the long, long way from heaven, the long, long way—’

Just why Anne Marie woke in the middle of the night she never knew. There was not a sound, not even the ticking of the clock to be heard.

The candle was still burning. Its soft yellow light made a bright glow in one corner of the dark room, and there, before Anne Marie, directly in the light stood—the Christmas Angel!

The Angel was in white, as Angels always are, and she glistened from head to foot as if powdered with star-dust or light-o’-the-moon. She stood quite still, with a sweet smile on her face, but as Anne Marie watched, slowly and as[99] light as a feather the Angel moved toward her bed.

Anne Marie held her breath. She was not in the least afraid. Over her bed bent the Angel, and Anne Marie felt a kiss, the gentlest, softest kiss you may imagine, placed upon her forehead.

It was all so beautiful! so lovely! Anne Marie wished that the Angel might stay with her forever. Not for any reason would she stir and perhaps startle the Angel away.

She closed her eyes for an instant only, but when she opened them again the room was dark. The Christmas Candle had burned out and the Christmas Angel had vanished.

When Anne Marie next awoke, the room was filled with daylight. It was a gray light, to be sure, for already a few flakes were drifting down from the cloudy sky and the day promised to be a snowy one.

But at least morning had come, and it took Anne Marie only a moment to dart to the hearth[100] and find her shoe well-filled, to carry it in to Maman and Papa’s bedside, to wish them a ‘Joyeux Noel’ With many kisses, and then to climb upon the bed to see what was in her shoe.

An orange, candy, a gay little purse filled with golden pennies, a box of colored pencils, a silver thimble, for Anne Marie dearly loved to sew.

It was remarkable how many presents the little Noel had managed to put into one small shoe.

And down in the very toe, where Anne Marie might never have thought of looking—only, of course, she did—was a box, and in the box a ring, a real gold ring, set with three stones of a most lovely shade of blue.

The ring fitted Anne Marie exactly. How had the little Noel known the size of her finger so well?

But Anne Marie spent little time in thinking[101] of that. She had something so tell—the Visit of the Christmas Angel.

‘True, true,’ murmured he when Anne Marie had finished. ‘It was truly an Angel that you saw last night.’

But Maman only laughed softly and said, ‘But was it not all a Christmas dream, Anne Marie?’

Anne Marie shook her head doubtfully. For a moment she did not know quite what to say or think. Perhaps it was a dream. But no, Anne Marie felt almost certain that a real shining Angel had stood beside her bed last night.

‘Why not ask your Polly Perkins?’ suggested Papa. ‘She sat beside your bed, did she not? and so must have seen all that went on during the night.’

Maman was delighted with Polly and her[102] cape. She listened with interest to Anne Marie’s account of Grandmother King’s Party.

But she only laughed again and again when Anne Marie said solemnly to her dolly,

Of course Polly didn’t answer out loud, but, as Anne Marie said, she looked as if she meant to say ‘yes.’

‘Granny,’ said Ailie, ‘do you think Santa Claus will come here to-night?’

‘Not if you are canny,’ was Granny’s reply. ‘Santa Claus leaves nothing for bairns who lie awake on Christmas Eve.’

‘Oh,’ said Ailie, ‘oh, doesn’t he?—Shall I hang up my stocking?’ was Ailie’s next question.

So Ailie hung her stocking, a well-mended stocking, too, from a convenient nail by the mantel-shelf, and with her head on one side[104] watched it for a moment as it dangled empty there.

Then she turned to Granny who, well wrapped in her old plaid shawl, sat rocking to and fro.

‘I have had my Christmas already,’ replied Granny, ‘a good new friend round the corner and a cure for my cough.’

‘But perhaps Santa Claus will bring you something more,’ said Ailie hopefully, as she climbed into bed with Polly in her arms.

‘Snuggle doun,’ said Ailie to Polly, ‘while I tell you a secret. I told it to the other Polly and now I will tell it to you. This is what I would like rare fine, though I’m not thinking that Santa Claus will bring it to me to-night. I would like a mither, a pretty mither, who would wear a dress made of silk like the one Patty’s mither wore at the Party to-day. And I would like a father who would put his hand in his[105] pocket and pull me out a penny just as if it were nothing at all. And I would like four little brothers and four little sisters to play with me. I would wash them and dress them and take them all out for a walk. But if I never had a one of them, Polly, I would not cry, because I have you, and so long as I have you I will never be lonely again.’

Hand in hand lay Ailie and Polly on the bed. But presently in her sleep Ailie turned over and burrowed down under the bedclothes until you couldn’t see so much as the tip of her nose nor one of the sandy ringlets that clustered all over the top of her round little head. So far under the bed-covers went she that no doubt that is why Ailie heard not a sound all the night long.

But Polly, lying beside her on the bed, did not close her pretty brown eyes the whole night through. So Polly must have seen Santa Claus, for certainly Ailie’s stocking was filled when she woke in the morning, and who, may I ask,[106] filled the stocking unless Santa Claus himself had been there?

Polly, too, through the window, must have watched the moon sail slowly past in the Christmas sky. She must have seen the stars twinkle and burn and then grow pale as little by little the light grew stronger and at last morning came. No doubt Polly saw the great gray snow-clouds spread and spread until the whole sky was covered over and the first frosty flakes came softly fluttering down.

Last of all, Polly must have heard the clatter of feet on the stairs, a clatter that came nearer and nearer to Ailie’s little room at the very tiptop of the tall, tall building until at last the clatter stopped just outside Ailie’s own door.

But when she opened the door and saw who it was standing there on the little landing, she[107] flung both arms about Aunt Elspeth’s neck—for it was Aunt Elspeth herself whom Granny saw standing there—and joyfully brought her into the little room. And behind Aunt Elspeth came Uncle Rob, carrying a big bag in one hand, and with a white bundle carefully held in his other arm.

Oh, how glad Granny was to see Aunt Elspeth and Uncle Rob, come all the way from Scotland over the sea, and, oh, how glad they both were to see Granny, too!

Then Aunt Elspeth made Granny sit down in the rocking-chair and very gently she took the white bundle from Uncle Rob’s arms.

She laid it in Granny’s lap, she unpinned a soft white blanket, and there looking up into Granny’s face lay a little rosy baby with blue eyes and a sandy curl or two that might have belonged to Ailie McNabb herself.

‘This is Thomas,’ said Aunt Elspeth proudly,—‘my Thomas. But we call him Tammus for short.’

[108]‘He is the image of our Ailie,’ said Granny, hugging wee Tammus and rocking him to and fro and never once taking her eyes off his round rosy little face.

Aunt Elspeth took off all wee Tammus’s outside wrappings, and then with a smile she tucked him under the covers, right down beside Ailie in the bed.

Now Tammus was wide awake and he didn’t mean to lie still a moment longer. His fat little legs waved to and fro, his short arms struck out right and left, and with a mighty thump Tammus turned himself over and began to crawl up on his Cousin Ailie’s head.

So Ailie woke. And when she saw a real live pink-and-white baby crawling and tumbling about in the bed, at first Ailie didn’t know what to think, and then in a moment she understood just what had happened.

[109]‘Santa Claus brought him,’ said Ailie. ‘Santa Claus brought him to me.’

Then Ailie saw Aunt Elspeth and Uncle Rob, and she opened her eyes wider than ever before.

‘Is it a mither for me?’ asked Ailie in her surprise. ‘A mither and a father too?’

‘No, Ailie,’ said Granny with a shake of the head, but smiling as Ailie had not seen her smile in many a long day, ‘but it is almost as good. It is Aunt Elspeth and Uncle Rob come from Scotland to take care of you and me.’

When Aunt Elspeth picked up Ailie and hugged her close, Ailie put both arms about Aunt Elspeth’s neck and felt that this was the very best present that Santa Claus had ever brought to a little girl.

Then Ailie asked a question that first surprised Aunt Elspeth and then that made her laugh.

‘Yes,’ whispered back Aunt Elspeth, ‘a[110] bright blue silk. Will you like it, do you think?’

‘Aye,’ answered Ailie, patting Aunt Elspeth’s back in her delight, ‘and when you put it on you will be prettier than Patty’s mither, for your cheeks are rosier than hers.

‘I did want four little brothers and four little sisters,’ went on Ailie, after a bit, ‘but Tammus will do just as well as all of them, I think.’

‘He will be much easier to take care of,’ agreed Aunt Elspeth. ‘And then you know Uncle Rob is going to buy a farm, and you and Granny are coming to live with us there. We will have hens and chickens and ducks, and a pig, and a cow, and horses, too. You will have plenty of friends to play with there. You will never miss the four little brothers and four little sisters, I ween.’

‘Aye, Aunt Elspeth,’ said Ailie happily, ‘’twill be rare fine for Granny and Tammus and me.’

Uncle Rob proved to be so kind and friendly that Ailie, sitting upon his lap, went so far as to confide to him ‘her secret,’ her secret wish for a[111] mother and a father and brothers and sisters, too, and how she now thought that he and Aunt Elspeth and Tammus would take their places and answer just as well.

And when, later in the day, Uncle Rob did actually put his hand in his pocket and pull out a penny for Ailie, ‘just as if it were nothing at all,’ you couldn’t have found a happier little girl in New York City than Ailie McNabb.

‘It is a grand Christmas Day, Polly,’ said Ailie as she and Polly Perkins settled down in a corner for a quiet little talk. ‘Santa Claus brought me everything. A stocking full of goodies, oranges and nuts and candies, too. And he brought me Aunt Elspeth and Tammus and Uncle Rob.

‘But I will always love you most, Polly, never fear, because I knew you first of all. Aye, I will always love you rare fine, Polly Perkins,’ said little Ailie McNabb.

There stood the Tree, fragrant and green, looking taller and more beautiful than ever in the dull morning light.

Under the Tree, propped comfortably against the low branches, sat Polly Perkins King. Her face wore a wise little smile as if she knew all that had happened last night, but would never, never tell.

[113]‘Merry Christmas, Polly,’ whispered Patty as she crept into the room. ‘Oh, look at my stocking, look!’

Yes, the stocking that last night had hung from the mantelpiece, so thin and limp, had now become delightfully plump and thick, with strange little bumps and knobs all over it, and with packages actually peeping over the edge of the top, it was so full.

‘Oh!’ said Patty again, her eyes fixed on the stocking, ‘oh, Polly, look!’

Up on a chair climbed Patty and with nimble fingers unfastened the stocking and lifted it down.

Then into Mother’s room she ran to wake Mother and Father and Grandmother, too, across the hall, and to be the very first one to wish them all a Merry Christmas Day.

You would never guess all the presents that had been crowded into Patty’s stocking.

‘Not a really truly watch,’ explained Patty, ‘but just as good as a really truly one.’

‘As soft as a kitten and as warm as a bear,’ declared Patty, trying them on at once. ‘Maybe Santa Claus wears this kind his very own self.’

‘Maybe he does,’ answered Father. ‘Open that long box, Patty. It says on the card, “Merry Christmas from Thomas.” Perhaps Santa Claus came in through the hall last night, for Thomas must have asked him to put this in your stocking for him.’

So Patty untied Thomas’s box. It held a large silk handkerchief, blue-and-red on one side and red-and-blue on the other.

[115]‘But I shan’t use it for a handkerchief,’ said she. ‘It is too good. I shall use it for a—for a shawl,’ said Patty, putting it about her shoulders and making herself look like a little Mother Bunch.

‘You might wear it for a muffler under your coat,’ suggested Father, ‘like my black-and-white muffler, you know.’

For Patty was going on a journey this Christmas Day. She was going to Four Corners with Father and Mother and Grandmother to eat her Christmas dinner at the Farm with Aunt Mary and Uncle Charles.

She found a string of beautiful pink coral beads in the toe. There was a small paint-box, and a book full of pictures all ready for Patty to paint. There was a ball of gay red worsted and two knitting-needles. Grandmother must have[116] known something about that, for she had long ago promised to teach Patty to knit.

But the present in her stocking that Patty liked best of all was a wee pair of brown mittens so tiny that no little girl, not even a baby girl, could possibly have squeezed her fingers into them.

‘They are for Polly!’ cried Patty. ‘They are for Polly Perkins. She shall wear them to-day to show Aunt Mary and Uncle Charles.’

Yes, Polly Perkins was going with Patty to the Farm. Mother had said she might because it was Christmas Day.

Soon they were ready for the journey. Polly Perkins looked well, dressed in her new brown cape and hood, trimmed with beaver fur, and her brown mittens that were a perfect fit. Patty, too, wore her new fur-lined gloves, and her string of pink coral beads, while about her neck as a muffler was Thomas’s gay silk handkerchief, the blue-and-red side out.

[117]But just before Patty left the house, she began to run around, looking here and there and asking every one,

‘Where are my mice? Where are my five mice? Oh, Mother! Oh, Grandmother! Please help me find my mice!’

What did Patty mean? Why should a little girl want to find five mice? And just as she was starting on a journey, too!

The mice were found, tucked away in a paper bag, and were placed in Father’s overcoat pocket for safe-keeping.

The snow was falling, a flake here and a flake there, when they started. But as the train sped farther and farther along into the country, the ground grew white and the window-panes of the train were dotted thick with flying snow. Soon each little bush and tree was clothed in a warm white cloak, while every fencepost and pole wore a round white hood or a tall pointed cap[118] that gave to some of them the sauciest air in the world.

It was a real snowstorm, and Patty couldn’t help thinking that nothing could have been planned that would have given her greater pleasure.

She was delighted when Uncle Charles met them at the Four Corners Station with the old two-seater and the farm team of horses, instead of the automobile. As the horses pulled and plunged through the snow, Patty and Polly peeped over the edge of the carriage robe, their eyes very bright and their noses very red, but with their fingers as warm as toast in their new Christmas gloves, and both of them enjoying every moment of their ride.

The old red farmhouse looked pretty and homelike in its heavy trimming of soft white snow. And there in the doorway stood Aunt Mary, so anxious to see her visitors that she couldn’t wait indoors another moment.

[119]Presents, and another beautiful Christmas Tree, and every one laughing and talking and wishing ‘Merry Christmas’ all at once. That is what happened at first, with Patty in the midst of it, hopping about, and sitting on people’s laps, and then slipping away to walk around the Christmas Tree again and again.

‘Where are the kitties, Aunt Mary?’ asked Patty, ‘the four new little kitties you wrote Mother to tell me about?’

‘Out in the barn,’ said Aunt Mary. ‘Would you like to see them? Uncle Charles will take you out there if you do.’

‘I have brought each of them a Christmas present, and one for their mother, too,’ said Patty with a happy face. ‘They are mice, little mice made of catnip, and I would like to give them to the kitties now.’

‘You might see whether your present for Patty is dry yet,’ called Aunt Mary after Uncle[120] Charles, as, well wrapped up, he and Patty and the mice set out for the barn.

‘Another present for me? Do let me see it, Uncle Charles,’ begged Patty, all excitement.

So up the narrow barn stairs to the loft went Patty and Uncle Charles and the mice. And there in one corner of the loft stood a cradle, an old-fashioned wooden cradle, made by Uncle Charles for Polly Perkins as soon as Grandmother’s letter telling of the three Polly Perkinses had reached the Farm. It was painted a lovely shade of blue, and though the paint was still a little moist, Uncle Charles believed it would be quite dry by night so that the cradle might be safely carried home.

‘Aunt Mary has made the pillows and sheets and blankets for it,’ said Uncle Charles, setting the cradle aswing. ‘This is the kind of a bed your great-grandmother was put to sleep in, Patty King.’

Then down the stairs went happy Patty and[121] Uncle Charles to see the four new kitties and their mother.

The big gray mother cat was sleepy and plump, but she had the most interesting and lively family of kittens that Patty had ever seen. One was gray, one was black-and-white, one was all white with pale blue eyes, and the last and smallest and liveliest one of all was orange-yellow and white, ‘a tortoise-shell kitten,’ Uncle Charles said it was called.

How the kittens did like their catnip mice! Even their sleepy old mother tossed and boxed her mouse about, and presently ran up and down the length of the barn as lively as any of her lively brood of kittens, who leaped and tumbled and raced about to their hearts’ content and to Patty’s great entertainment.

‘I think they are so excited because this is the first Christmas present they have ever had,’ said Patty to Uncle Charles, as after a peep at the horses and the cows they made their way through the snow back to the house.

[122]Then out came the little pillows and mattress and sheets and blankets for Polly Perkins’s new cradle. And when they had been admired and shown to every one, and to Polly Perkins, too, it was dinner-time.

So it was not until after dinner and late in the afternoon that Patty was able to sit down in peace and quiet with Polly and talk over this most delightful Christmas Day.

‘Of course, Polly,’ said Patty, ‘this is the first Christmas you have ever had. You must feel like the kittens, so excited you don’t know what to do. Now I have had five Christmases. Five of them—just think! But I will tell you something, Polly Perkins. This Christmas is the very best Christmas of all.’

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I.	How Polly Perkins was Made	1
II.	Where is Polly Perkins?	12
III.	Polly Perkins goes on a Journey	25
IV.	What Anne Marie saw from the Window	38
V.	Out in the Snow	49
VI.	Wee Ailie McNabb	59
VII.	Three Little Girls and Polly Perkins	68
VIII.	Grandmother King’s Christmas Party	78
IX.	Anne Marie and the Christmas Angel	90
X.	What Santa Claus brought to Ailie McNabb	103
XI.	The Very Best Christmas of All	112

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pretty Polly Perkins

Pretty
Polly Perkins

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
HOW POLLY PERKINS WAS MADE

CHAPTER II
WHERE IS POLLY PERKINS?

CHAPTER III
POLLY PERKINS GOES ON A JOURNEY

CHAPTER IV
WHAT ANNE MARIE SAW FROM THE WINDOW

CHAPTER V
OUT IN THE SNOW

CHAPTER VI
WEE AILIE McNABB

CHAPTER VII
THREE LITTLE GIRLS AND POLLY PERKINS

CHAPTER VIII
GRANDMOTHER KING’S CHRISTMAS PARTY

CHAPTER IX
ANNE MARIE AND THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL

CHAPTER X
WHAT SANTA CLAUS BROUGHT TO AILIE McNABB

CHAPTER XI
THE VERY BEST CHRISTMAS OF ALL

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pretty Polly Perkins

Pretty Polly Perkins

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I HOW POLLY PERKINS WAS MADE

CHAPTER II WHERE IS POLLY PERKINS?

CHAPTER III POLLY PERKINS GOES ON A JOURNEY

CHAPTER IV WHAT ANNE MARIE SAW FROM THE WINDOW

CHAPTER V OUT IN THE SNOW

CHAPTER VI WEE AILIE McNABB

CHAPTER VII THREE LITTLE GIRLS AND POLLY PERKINS

CHAPTER VIII GRANDMOTHER KING’S CHRISTMAS PARTY

CHAPTER IX ANNE MARIE AND THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL

CHAPTER X WHAT SANTA CLAUS BROUGHT TO AILIE McNABB

CHAPTER XI THE VERY BEST CHRISTMAS OF ALL