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“Oh, it didn’t all run out!” the Doll answered. “Dorothy’s father hurried to the carpenter shop and got more sawdust, and Dorothy’s mother sewed it, up in me so I was all right again.”

“I’m glad of that,” remarked the White Rocking Horse.

“So am I,” said the Doll. “But do you know, since then, I have not been quite the same.”

“In what way?” asked the White Rocking Horse.

“Well, I seem to have a little indigestion,” went on the Sawdust Doll. “I think the carpenter shop sawdust they stuffed into me was not the same kind that was put in me when I was made in the North Pole shop of Santa Claus.”

“Very likely not,” agreed the Horse. “All sawdust is not alike. But still you are looking rather well.”

“I am glad you think so,” remarked the Doll. “But now let us talk of something pleasant. Tell me, again, about the race you had with the Elephant on his roller skates.”

So the White Horse did, but as you know as much of that funny race as I do, there is no need of putting it in here again.

So the two friends talked together in the hall until, all of a sudden, the Doll exclaimed:

“Oh, it is getting daylight! We must go back to our places–you to Dick’s room and I to Dorothy’s. Quick!”

The White Rocking Horse galloped back down the hall, and the Doll made her way into the room of the little girl whose birthday present she was.

Now whether the carpenter shop sawdust was not the right kind to enable the Doll to move quickly enough, and whether the oil the clerk had rubbed on the side of the Horse made him a bit slow and slippery, I cannot say. Anyhow, daylight suddenly broke just as the Doll reached the side of Dorothy’s bed, and before she had time to climb up into it by taking hold of the blankets.

As for the Horse, he was only half way inside Dick’s room when the sun came up and awakened both children. And of course, their eyes being open, Dorothy looking at her Doll and Dick at his Horse, neither toy dared move.

“Oh! Oh!” cried Dick, when he saw that his White Rocking Horse was on the other side of the room from where he had left it when he went to sleep the night before. “Oh! Oh! Some one had my Horse!”

“What makes you think so?” asked his father, coming in to see what Dick was shouting about.

“Because he’s moved,” the little boy answered. “My Rocking Horse has moved!”

“I guess the wind blew him,” said Daddy. “The wind from your open window blew on the horse, made him rock to and fro, and he moved in that way.”

But Dick shook his head.

“Either my Horse moved by himself in the night when I was asleep,” he said, “or else somebody was riding him.”

And when Dorothy awakened and saw her Doll lying on the carpet just under the edge of the bed, the little girl cried out, as Dick had done:

“Oh! Oh! Oh!”

“What’s the matter?” asked Mother, hurrying in.

“Somebody took my Doll out of bed, or else she got out herself in the night!” said Dorothy.

“She probably fell out,” said Mother, with a laugh. “The Doll couldn’t get out herself, and no one has been in your room.”

But we know what happened, don’t we?

One day, about a week after Christmas, there came a warm, sunny day.

“May I take my Rocking Horse out on the porch and ride him?” asked Dick of his mother.

“Yes,” she answered.

“And I’ll take my Sawdust Doll out there, and maybe Mirabell and Arnold will come over and we can have a play party,” said Dorothy.

The children went out on the porch, and they could look over next door and see their two little friends.

“See how fast I can ride my horse!” called Dick to Arnold.

The boy got up on the back of the White Horse and rocked to and fro. And the Horse traveled across the porch, as a rocking chair sometimes travels across the room.