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Where Sarah Jane’s Doll Went
by
Joe stood at her head and appeared to be teasing her. She twitched away from him, and lunged at him playfully with her budding horns.
“Joe! Joe!” called quaking little Sarah Jane.
Joe West gave one glance at her; his face flushed a burning red; then he left the bossy and went with long strides across the fields towards his home. The poor girl followed him.
“Joe! Joe!” called the little despairing voice, but he never turned his head.
Sarah Jane got past his house; then she sat down beside the road and wept. She did not know how Joe West, remorseful and penitent, was peeping at her from his window. She did not know of the tragedy which had just been enacted over there in the clover-field. The bossy calf, who was hungry for all strange articles of food, had poked her inquiring nose into Joe West’s jacket pocket, whence a bit of French calico emerged, had caught hold of it, and, in short, had then and there eaten up Lily Rosalie Violet May. Joe had made an attempt to pull her by her silken wig out of that greedy mouth, but the bossy calmly chewed on.
It was just as well that Sarah Jane did not know it at the time. She had enough to bear–her own distress over the loss of the doll, and the reproaches of Serena and her mother. They agreed that the loss of the doll served her right for her disobedience, and that nothing should be said to Joe West. They also thought the affair too trivial to fuss over. Lily Rosalie even in her designer’s eyes was not what she was to Sarah Jane.
“If you’d minded me you wouldn’t have lost it,” said Serena. “I am not going to make you another.”
Sarah Jane hung her head meekly. But in the course of three months she had another doll in a very unexpected and curious way.
One evening there was a knock on the side door, and when it was opened there was no one there, but on the step lay a big package directed to Sarah Jane. It contained a real bought doll, with a china head and a cloth body, who was gorgeously and airily attired in pink tarlatan with silver spangles. The memory of Lily Rosalie paled.
There was great wonder and speculation. Nobody dreamed how poor Joe West had driven cows from pasture, and milked, and chopped wood, out of school-hours, and taken every cent he had earned and bought this doll to atone for the theft of Lily Rosalie Violet May.
Sarah Jane’s mother declared that she should not carry this doll, no matter whence it came, to school, and she never did but once–that was on her birthday, and she teased so hard, and promised not to let any one take her, that her mother consented.
At recess Sarah Jane was again the centre of attraction. She turned that wonderful pink tarlatan lady round and round before the admiring eyes; but when Joe West, meek and mildly conciliatory, approached the circle, she clutched her tightly and turned her back on him.
“I’m not going to have Joe West steal another doll,” said she. And Joe colored and retreated.
Years afterwards, when Joe was practising law in the city, and came home for a visit, and Sarah Jane was so grown-up that she wore a white muslin hat with rosebuds, and a black silk mantilla, to church, she knew the whole story, and they had a laugh over it.