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Page 17
"You poor old thing!" she exclaimed, looking at Miranda almost tenderly.
"I'm sorry I shook you. You look so tired and sad and homesick! I wonder if
somebody is worrying about you this minute. It was very wicked of me to
take you away--on Christmas Eve, too! I wish I had left you where I found
you. Maybe some little girl is crying now because you are lost."
Mary stooped and lifted the doll gently upon her knees. As she took Miranda
up, the blue eyes opened and seemed to look full at her. Miranda's one
beauty was her eyes. Mary felt her heart grow warmer and warmer toward the
quaint stranger.
"You have lovely eyes," she murmured. "I think after all you are almost
pretty. Perhaps I should grow to like you awfully. You are not a bit like
the doll I hoped to have; but that is not your fault." A thought made her
face brighten. "Why, if you had been a beautiful doll they would have taken
you away and sold you for rum." Her face expressed utter disgust. She
hugged Miranda close with a sudden outburst of affection. "Oh, you dear old
thing!" she cried. "I am so glad you are--just like this. I am so glad, for
now I can keep you always and always, and no one will want to take you away
from me."
She rocked to and fro, holding the doll tightly to her heart. Mary was not
one to feel a half-passion about anything. "I will make you some new
dresses," she said, fingering the old-fashioned silk with a puzzled air. "I
wonder why your mother dressed you so queerly? She was not much of a sewer
if she made this bonnet!" Scornfully she took off the primitive bonnet and
smoothed out the tangled hair. "I wonder what you have on underneath," she
said.
With gentle fingers she began to undress Miranda. Off came the green silk
dress with its tight "basque" and overskirt. Off came the ruffled petticoat
and little chemise edged with fine lace. And Miranda stood in shapeless,
kid-bodied ugliness, which stage of evolution the doll of her day had
reached.
But there was something more. Around her neck she wore a ribbon; on the
ribbon was a cardboard medal; and on the medal a childish hand had
scratched the legend,--
_Miranda Terry._
If lost, please return her to her mother,
_Angelina Terry_,
87 Overlook Terrace.
It was such a card as Miss Terry herself had worn in the days when her
mother had first let her and Tom go out on the street without a nurse.
Mary stared hard at the bit of cardboard. 87 Overlook Terrace! Yes, that
was where she had found the doll. She remembered now seeing the name on a
street corner. _Miranda;_ what a pretty name for a doll! _Angelina Terry;_
so that was the name of the little girl who had lost Miranda. Angelina
must be feeling very sorry now. Perhaps she was crying herself to sleep,
for it was growing late.
Her two girl cousins came romping into the bedroom. They had been having a
hilarious evening.
"Hello, Mary!" they cried. "We heard about your great find!"--"Playing with
your old doll, are you? Goin' to hang up her stockin' and see if Santa
Claus will fill it?"--"Huh! Santa Claus won't come to _this_ house, I
guess!"
Mary had almost forgotten that it was Christmas Eve. There had been nothing
in the house to remind her. Perhaps Angelina Terry had hung up a stocking
for Miranda at 87 Overlook Terrace. But there would be no Miranda to see it
the next morning.
Her cousins teased her for some time, while they undressed, and Mary grew
sulky. She sat in her corner and answered them shortly. But presently the
room was quiet, for the girls slept easily. Then Mary crept into her little
cot with the doll in her arms. She loved Miranda so much that she would
never part with her, no indeed; not even though she now knew where Miranda
belonged. 87 Overlook Terrace! The figures danced before her eyes
maliciously. She wished she could forget them. And the thought of Angelina
Terry kept coming to her. Poor Angelina!
"She ain't 'poor Angelina,'" argued Mary to herself. "She's _rich_
Angelina. Doesn't she live in a big house in the swell part of the city? I
s'pose she has hundreds of dolls, much handsomer than Miranda, and lots of
other toys. I guess she won't miss this one queer old doll. I guess she'd
let me keep it if she knew I hadn't any of my own. I guess it ought to be
my doll. Anyway, I'm going to keep her. I don't believe Angelina loves
Miranda so much as I do."
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