“What can the poor child mean?” demanded the worried principal, of the matron. “Dr. Larry says that this worrying over the mysterious ‘Beulah’ is doing her more harm than anything else.”
Mrs. Cupp’s face was very grim. She was not a sympathetic looking woman at best. Now she looked more severe than ever. She marched out of the sick room without a word. She had already removed from about Nan’s neck the fine gold chain and key. In a few minutes she marched in again, to Dr. Prescott’s unbounded surprise, and laid a wonderful, big, pink-cheeked doll beside Nan in the bed.
Mrs. Cupp, it seems, had a pretty exact knowledge of everything hidden at the bottom of the girls’ trunks, after all.
When Nan aroused the next time, there was Beautiful Beulah right in the crook of her arm. She smiled, hugged the doll close to her, took her medicine without a murmur, and went at once to sleep again.
“Poor little girl,” said good Dr. Larry when he was told about it. “Of course that wasn’t what has been really troubling her, Dr. Prescott. But the doll is connected with a happier time, when she was at home with her absent parents. With that wax beauty in her possession all troubles look smaller to her youthful mind.”
“I did think Nancy Sherwood was too big for doll-babies!” sniffed Mrs. Cupp, refusing to show any further tenderness.
“I can see how she feels,” said Dr. Prescott, understandingly. “I’m tempted to play with that beautiful thing myself. Nancy loves babies, and is as kind as she can be to the smaller girls. It would not hurt some of the girls older than she if they ‘played dolls’ again. They are altogether too grown-up.”
Bess was at the door of the sick room morning, noon and night. As soon as the physician said there was no danger, Nan’s chum was allowed in the room. When she saw the big doll on the pillow beside Nan’s head, she uttered a large, round “O!”
“Didn’t you ever see it before, Elizabeth?” asked the principal, curiously.
“Oh—why! It’s Beautiful Beulah! Beg pardon, Dr. Prescott! it isn’t named after you. Nan had it ever so many years ago. My! I never suspected it was in existence. And to bring it to school with her! My!”