“But I have told your grandmother that I was going to give the doll to you.” Miss Dean’s voice trembled now, and the next moment I saw her brown eyes fill with tears.
“I have ever so many dolls,” I cried, naming over six or seven, “and really, Miss Dean, I would rather have Susie here, because it will be all the nicer when I come to see you.” I remember thinking so just then, because Miss Dean was unhappy about it.
“What will your grandmother think of me? what will she think of me?” Miss Dean spoke with a real sob in her voice.
Then I knew more surely than before that I must not take Susie away. I petted Miss Dean and talked and talked until she dried her eyes and asked me if I didn’t want to try Susie’s dresses on again, so that I would be used to her ways, as long as she was truly going to be mine some day.
I remember that about as fast as Miss Dean began to feel better I began to feel worse. While she put away the food and the dishes in that clean, dainty kitchen, I played with the doll, dressing and undressing her; and when I finally pinned the little red shawl over the white nightgown, I am sure two or three of my tears fell upon Susie. Then I knew it was time for me to be going home.
“Are you perfectly sure you don’t want to take Susie?” Miss Dean asked me at the door.
“I want you to have her more!” I called back. I could not say another word, so I started and ran for home, hugging the black-and-gold lacquered box under my arm: I had entirely forgotten to show that to grandmother while she was there.
Grandmother was so interested in the box that she seemed to forget all about the doll. But I went to see Miss Dean and Susie almost every day. I had a queer feeling about that doll,—she was mine and yet she wasn’t. Perhaps I actually enjoyed her more that way. Once in awhile I found Miss Dean making new dresses for Susie; and then she always said: “I want your doll to have a lot of pretty clothes to wear.”
It happened that my father and mother came home from California unexpectedly and sent for me to join them, and I was hurried off without time even to say good-bye to Miss Dean and Susie. It must have been two months after that when I received a letter from Miss Dean. She wrote about her spring chickens and her garden, chiefly, but at the end of the letter she said, “Susie misses you very much. She grows prettier every day.”
When I read this letter to my mother, she asked: “Who is Susie? Some little girl who lives with Miss Dean?”