“O, she has on the ball dress,” cried Alice, timidly touching one of the tiny pink rosebuds which looped up the muslin dress over the blue silk petticoat.
“You dear doll!” said Elsa softly.
“She is kind of quaint and pretty,” Betty said, after a good second look.
Ben gave a low whistle, but said nothing. He thought the doll was a beauty. The tiny pink rosebuds had won his heart.
Susie was a china-headed doll, with stiff, unjointed arms. Her black hair, parted and drawn down over her ears, her very black eyes, bright red cheeks and rounded mouth gave her an old-time appearance both quaint and attractive.
“How well you have kept her,” exclaimed Betty. Her own dolls had all suffered some misfortune, such as broken arms or hairless heads.
“I did not have Susie until I was sixteen years old,” Miss Ruth said, “and then I was too old to play with her.”
“Do girls have to stop playing with dolls when they are sixteen years old?” Elsa inquired anxiously.
“O no,” Miss Ruth replied; “but girls of sixteen are usually too busy with study and other things to have time for dolls.”
“How did you happen to get the old doll?” Ben asked. He did not mean to be disrespectful; it was only a boy’s way of speaking.