Aunt Bee passed by on her way home from market, and stopped to hear all that had happened that day.
She learned of Tippy’s wrongdoing, of poor Tilly Maud’s fate. She admired Jack Tar and agreed that he might be turned into a girl at a moment’s notice, and without the least harm to his feelings, too.
‘Really the most boyish thing about him is his hair,’ said Aunt Bee. ‘And if he wore a little cap or a ribbon I don’t believe Captain Ball himself could tell whether he were Jack Tar or Nancy Lee.’
‘But I like him to be a boy,’ said Alice. ‘I like a boy baby and a boy doll just as well as girls.’
‘And so do I,’ said agreeable Aunt Bee.
Presently the dolls grew sleepy, or so their mothers said, and down on the doorstep, now dry in the sun, sat Sally and Alice, to give the children a nap.
‘There is Buff,’ said Sally in a low voice, ‘up on the window-sill asleep in the sun.’
‘I wonder where Tippy is,’ inquired Alice, whose tender heart held no wrath against Tip, especially now that little Jack Tar lay sleeping in her lap.
‘I wonder, too,’ said Sally.
‘Tippy! Tippy!’ she called softly.