“That comes at the end of the story,” Miss Ruth answered. “Are you ready for me to go on?”
Everybody said, “Yes,” and Elsa added: “I will put Susie in a rocking-chair and we can look at her and that will make the story seem more real than ever.”
“That is just the way Miss Dean used to have her,” said Miss Ruth, as Elsa placed the doll in a small rocking-chair upon a cushion and drew the chair toward the table.
“I remember,” Elsa answered.
Once more the girls took up their paint-brushes and went to work, while Ben stretched himself again upon the hearth-rug in his favourite position; and then the story-teller began again:
Miss Dean had been making ready for our party all the morning, I think, because we had so many things to eat. She seemed not to want to use anything which grandmother had sent. First, we had hot biscuit and little meat-balls; then we had chocolate frosted cake, currant-jelly tarts and plum preserves, with hot chocolate to drink.
“May we have Susie at the table with us?” I asked just as we were sitting down; so Miss Dean sat Susie on the dictionary in the tallest chair, and she put food on a plate for Susie, just as she did for me. When I wasn’t looking, Miss Dean slipped the food off to a plate on a side table, and then put more food in front of the doll, urging her in such a pretty way to eat more. I never shall forget how young and happy Miss Dean looked that day at the table, with such a kind, motherly expression in her large brown eyes.
We were just eating some preserved ginger and drinking the last of our chocolate, and Miss Dean was saying: “I am sure Susie would enjoy company very much indeed if she had more of it,” when there came a knock at the front door and my grandmother walked into the room. She and Miss Dean were such near neighbours and good friends that when either one called upon the other, she did not wait at the door, but walked in.
Miss Dean rose, greeted my grandmother, and then looked at me in such a timid, appealing manner that I knew she was thinking of Susie and wondering what my grandmother would think of the doll being there.
Grandmother sat down very straight in her chair, I remember, and looked around in her pleasant way. Her eyesight wasn’t very good. Probably, too, she didn’t remember how my own dolls looked. For very soon she said: “I see that Ruth brought her doll to have luncheon with you, Phœbe,”—grandmother always called Miss Dean by her first name.