‘Yes, I suppose that you may,’ answered Grandmother, who did not look so pleased with the plan as did Patty. ‘I am afraid there will not be any room for her in my bag.’
Aunt Mary worked away until the pockets were finished, and when Patty looked at her dolly in her gay pink frock, with a green ‘Polly’ on one pocket and a green ‘Perkins’ on the other, she thought she had never seen anything so pretty in all her life.
Uncle Charles came to supper and to take Aunt Mary home, and, before he was inside the door, Patty was all ready to whisper in his ear and to give him three kisses, one on each cheek and one on his chin.
‘I think you paint the loveliest dollies in the world,’ whispered Patty in Uncle Charles’s ear. ‘And that is why my dolly is named Polly Perkins. Because she is as beautiful as a butterfly. Grandmother said so. And I am going to carry her all the way home in my arms. Grandmother said that, too.’
But the next morning when Patty woke the rain was pouring down, and there was no question, in Grandmother’s mind, at least, about Patty carrying Polly Perkins in her arms.
‘We will send your dolly home in a box by express,’ decided Grandmother. ‘You wouldn’t enjoy carrying her in the rain, I know.’
‘She might catch cold,’ agreed Patty, ‘for she hasn’t any coat. That is the way Isabel went home, in a box, and I expect she enjoyed it, too.’
So Polly was wrapped in a pink-and-blue tufted coverlet, that was to have been used as a traveling-rug, and carefully placed in a large pasteboard box.
‘Be a good girl,’ whispered Patty, tenderly kissing Polly good-bye on her rosy mouth.
Then she watched Grandmother wrap the box in heavy paper and tie it with stout brown twine.