“I decided that I would take the boys good knives, so that they could make things, and marbles and balls, so that they might have games; and to the girls I would take dolls. I have gone out from my starting point with hundreds of the dearest, most delightful dollies you could think of, tucked away in my wagon. I have even had to have a second wagon to start with, because of the many things I was carrying along. At first there would be no need to give these things at the houses at which I stayed—the houses nearer the towns. But as I went on and on, over this mountain, and down into that valley and up over the next mountain, I would come on the people who lived in the hollow land.
“They had few friends, or none. They went nowhere. They had nothing to do, except scratch the ground for a little food. One day was like another; and in the faces of the children was a look like that to be seen in the face of a dog—a look of terrible wistfulness, as if there was that in the soul which never could be expressed. To these children I brought my gifts. The boys were glad of the knives and marbles and balls; but nothing like so glad as the girls were of the dolls. Many and many of them never had seen a doll at all. Yet never once did I have to tell them what they were for. They simply reached out their arms and took them, and hugged them up to them—not before people, understand, but as soon as ever they were alone.
“Some of these lonely little girls had hardly known what it was to be kissed, and they would have been ashamed to throw their arms around their mother’s necks and hug and kiss them; but when they got alone with dolly—their own, own dolly—they kissed and hugged it as if they had been starved for want of things like that. Then when I could take along some extra things, so that they could really change the doll’s clothes, and wash and iron for their pets, then, at last, they really had something to do. They seemed to come to life—not the dolls, but the little mothers. Perhaps the dolls did, too. I’m not sure. They were loved enough to make them.”
“Oh, Miss Borrow,” cried Mrs. Carson, “you lucky, lucky woman, to be able to think of such a lovely thing and to carry it out!”
“Lucky is that lucky does,” said the old gentleman beside Annie Laurie, twisting an old saying to suit his purposes.
“Well,” said Carin across the table, under cover of the conversation, “that’s why she’s called the ‘doll lady,’ Annie Laurie. Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Beautiful,” replied the other. “And—and why couldn’t we help get some of the dolls ready, Carin? And my aunts—if I could get them to working on those dolls, perhaps they wouldn’t be worrying and wondering so much.”
Mr. Carson overheard her remark, though it was intended only for Carin.
“Excellent and sensible, Annie Laurie,” he said in his light way—that way which meant so much yet seemed to mean so little. “You have said a wise thing. I believe the Misses Pace are to honor us with their presence at dinner to-morrow, are they not, Lucy?”
“Yes,” responded Mrs. Carson, “I am glad to be able to say that they are.”