“Are you going to do it?” demanded Duty, confronting her. “Are you going to give up all your convictions now? Rebecca Mary's in her twelfth year-pretty late to begin to humor her. I thought you didn't believe in humoring.”
“I unpinned the nightgown,” parried Aunt Olivia, on the defensive. “I never let her make another one.”
“But you're weakening now. You want to let her have THIS doll.”
“It seems like part of—of her inheritance.”
“Lock that drawer!”
Aunt Olivia turned the key unhappily. It was not that her “convictions” had changed—it was her heart.
She went up at odd times and looked at the doll the minister's wife had dressed. She had an unaccountable, uncomfortable feeling that it was lying there in its coffin—that Rebecca Mary would have said, “She's dead.”
It was a handsome doll. Aunt Olivia was not acquainted with dolls, but she acknowledged that. She admired it unwillingly. She liked its clothes—the minister's wife had not spared any pains. She had not stinted in tucks nor ruffles.
Once Aunt Olivia took it out and turned it over in her hands with critical intent, but there was nothing to criticise. It was a beautiful doll. She held it with a curious, shy tenderness. But that time she did not sit down with it. It was the next time.
The rocker was so near the bureau, and Aunt Olivia was tired—and the doll was already in her arms. She only sat down. For a minute she sat quite straight and unrelaxed, then she settled back a little—a little more. The doll lay heavily against her, its flaxen head touching her breast. After the manner of high-bred dolls, its eyes drooped sleepily.