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Aunt Lucretia speechlessly unmuffled a clove apple and a nautilus shell that had graced the parlor shelf; then a little daintily dressed rag doll with cheeks stained pink with cranberry juice appeared. When young Lucretia spied this last she made a little grab at it.

“Oh,” she sobbed, “somebody did hang this on for me! They did–they did! It’s mine!”

It never seemed to young Lucretia that she walked going home that night; she had a feeling that only her tiptoes occasionally brushed the earth; she went on rapidly, with a tall aunt on either side. Not much was said. Once in a lonely place in the road there was a volley of severe questions from her aunts, and young Lucretia burst out in a desperate wail. “Oh!” she cried, “I was going to put ’em right back again, I was! I’ve not hurt ’em any. I was real careful. I didn’t s’pose you’d know it. Oh, they said you were cross an’ stingy, an’ wouldn’t hang me anything on the tree, an’ I didn’t want ’em to think you were. I wanted to make ’em think I had things, I did.”

“What made you think of such a thing?”

“I don’t know.”

“I shouldn’t think you would know. I never heard of such doings in my life!”

After they got home not much was said to young Lucretia; the aunts were still too much bewildered for many words. Lucretia was bidden to light her candle and go to bed, and then came a new grief, which was the last drop in the bucket for her. They confiscated her rag doll, and put it away in the parlor with the clove apple, the nautilus shell, and the gift-book. Then the little girl’s heart failed her, remorse for she hardly knew what, terror, and the loss of the sole comfort that had come to her on this pitiful Christmas Eve were too much.

“Oh,” she wailed, “my rag baby! my rag baby! I–want my–rag baby. Oh! oh! oh! I want her, I want her.”

Scolding had no effect. Young Lucretia sobbed out her complaint all the way up-stairs, and her aunts could distinguish the pitiful little wail of, “my rag baby, I want my rag baby,” after she was in her chamber.

The two women looked at each other. They had sat uneasily down by the sitting-room fire.

“I must say that I think you’re rather hard on her, Lucretia,” said Maria, finally.

“I don’t know as I’ve been any harder on her than you have,” returned Lucretia. “I shouldn’t have said to take away that rag baby if I’d said just what I thought.”

“I think you’d better take it up to her, then, and stop that crying,” said Maria.

Lucretia hastened into the north parlor without another word. She carried the rag baby up-stairs to young Lucretia; then she came down to the pantry and got a seed-cake for her. “I thought the child had better have a little bite of something; she didn’t eat scarcely a mite of supper,” she explained to Maria. She had given young Lucretia’s head a hard pat when she bestowed the seed-cake, and bade her eat it and go right to sleep. The little girl hugged her rag baby and ate her cooky in bliss.

The aunts sat a while longer by the sitting-room fire. Just before they left it for the night Lucretia looked hesitatingly at Maria, and said, “I s’pose you have noticed that wax doll down to White’s store, ‘ain’t you?”

“That big wax one with the pink dress?” asked Maria, faintly and consciously.

“Yes. There was a doll’s bedstead there, too. I don’t know as you noticed.”

“Yes, I think I did, now you speak of it. I noticed it the day I went in for the calico. There was a doll baby’s carriage there, too.”

The aunts looked at each other. “I s’pose it would be dreadful foolish,” said Lucretia.

“She’d be ‘most too tickled to live,” remarked Maria.

“Well, we can’t buy ’em to-night anyway,” said Lucretia. “I must light the candles an’ lock up.”

The next day was Christmas. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when old Mrs. Emmons went up the road to the Raymond house. She had a little parcel. When she came into the sitting-room there was young Lucretia in a corner, so that the room should not get in a mess, with her wealth around her. She looked forth, a radiant little mother of dolls, from the midst of her pretty miniature house-keeping.

“My sakes!” cried old Mrs. Emmons, “isn’t that complete? She’s got a big wax doll, an’ a bedstead, an’ a baby-carriage, an’ a table an’ bureau. I declare! Well, I don’t know what I should have thought when I was a little gal. An’ I’ve brought some pieces for you to make some more dresses for the rag baby, if you want to.”

Young Lucretia’s eyes shone.

“You were real kind to think of it,” said Aunt Lucretia; “an’ she’ll take real comfort making the dresses. I’m real glad you came in, Mis’ Emmons. I’ve been going down to see you for a long time. I want to see Ann, too; I thought I’d see if she hadn’t got a pattern of a dress that buttons up in the back for Lucretia.”

Young Lucretia’s eyes shone more than ever, and she smiled out of her corner like a little star.