“Great Scott!” thought Frank. “Is the girl daffy, too?”
“I’ve always admired dolls,” Hilda explained. “When I was a little girl I had no doll save an old rag one, but I loved it and petted it and talked to it, for it was my only companion during many a long, weary day.”
She sat down facing Frank and continued:
“As I grew older my love for dolls seemed to grow with me, instead of lessening. In Vanceborough, I had seen some dolls with china heads, and to my eyes they were the most beautiful things in all the world. When father brought one home to me I was filled with joy too deep for words. But the china head was broken one day, and it nearly broke my heart at the same time. I had heard of large wax dolls that closed their eyes when put to sleep and said ‘ma-ma’ when squeezed, but such stories seemed far too marvelous to be true.
“However, when I went away to school I saw one of them, and then I could never be satisfied till I had one for my very own. Of course I got it, and I kept it many years, dressing and undressing it, talking to it, telling it all my little secrets and having it to keep me from loneliness there on that dreary island. Maybe you can see, living as I did without other companions, that it was not strange that my love for dolls clung to me as I grew to be a young woman. When I went to Boston I took my doll and had it with me in my room, though I was careful not to let people know much about it, for I had begun to be ashamed.
“But Huck Jones, who was my father’s companion during so many years, came to know all about my fondness for dolls. He knew it clung to me even after I was a girl in long dresses. Sometimes he laughed at me and tried to tease me about it, but I had a temper and I soon convinced him that he had better keep still.
“After father died Jones made arrangements to go abroad. He did so, but all the while he led me to believe there was something coming to me when he returned. I had refused to marry him, but I still hoped against hope that he might relent and turn over to me a part of the money I felt confident my father had left.
“He wrote to me several times while he was on the other side. At last he wrote that he was coming back by the way of Canada, asking me to meet him in Montreal. His letter was most ingenious, for he promised to reveal to me something I wished to know very much, and he added that he had purchased the handsomest doll he could find in all Europe, which he was bringing to me.
“I met him as appointed. He had the doll, which he gave me, but he refused to tell me the secret till we met again in Boston, for he declared he had some business that would delay him a few days, while I was to go on to Boston the following day. It seems that he had met a lady with two charming children who would be on the same train with me, and he urged me to permit the oldest girl, who was nine, to hold the doll as much as she liked on the way to Boston. But I was to take the doll when the time came for us to leave the train and care for it till he met me at the Adams House. If the doll was in my hands and all right he would tell me the secret then.
“Well, I followed his directions. Everything went well, but I kept thinking over his curious directions. As we crossed into the United States the little girl was sleeping with my doll hugged to her heart. She cried a little when she had to give it up as Boston was reached.