Swinging her pail, Ailie skipped along the snowy street to the grocery store. Closely she watched the pouring of the milk from the tall can into her little pail, for Ailie was a good shopper. Granny herself said it, so of course it must be true.
Then, making sure that the cover of her pail was on firm and tight, Ailie started for home.
She was walking slowly, carefully balancing her pail, for she did not mean to spill one single drop of milk, when, only a step or two from her own doorway, she saw lying before her on the sidewalk a beautiful big rag doll.
Ailie set her pail down in the snow and picked up the dolly. Then she turned and looked up and down the long city street.
At one end of the block was a boy shoveling snow. Clearly he had not lost a doll. Two men were walking toward Ailie. Their coat-collars were turned up about their ears, their hands were thrust deep into their overcoat pockets, and they were talking so busily as they passed that they did not even give Ailie a glance.
If Ailie had gone down to the corner and there looked up the street, she would have seen a little girl—Anne Marie, of course—running wildly along, a friendly little brown dog leaping and whirling at her side. And if Ailie, a few moments later, had peered from her window, though, to be sure, it was so high that it was hard to see the street, she might have spied Anne Marie searching, with tears in her eyes, for her lost Polly Perkins. If she had done those things, it is very likely that Anne Marie would not have gone crying to bed that night.
But Ailie did not think of going down to the corner. Neither did she look from the window when she had hastily climbed the four flights of stairs, with the pail of milk in one hand and the beautiful dolly tenderly clasped in the other arm.
OH! HOW AILIE ADMIRED POLLY’S PRETTY PINK DRESS
‘Eh, my good little Ailie,’ whispered Granny, opening her eyes and trying to smile as Ailie held Polly Perkins up before her and told how she had found her lying in the snow, ‘sit ye doun and rock your bairn the while I sleep again to ease the cough.’