‘What are you going to put on the dolly for hair?’
Patty looked at Grandmother and Grandmother looked at Patty.
‘I hadn’t thought yet about hair,’ began Grandmother slowly, when Mr. Johns disappeared beneath the counter.
Patty could hear him pulling and tumbling boxes about, and at last up came Mr. Johns from under the counter with his face very red, indeed, and a smudge of dust on his cheek, but holding in his hand a little brown curly wig.
‘Will that do?’ asked Mr. Johns, smiling proudly at his surprised customers. ‘I knew I had a little wig somewhere, if only I could put my hand on it. It has been lying around here for two years or more.’
Two years old or not, the little brown wig was as good as new, and Patty was so anxious to have the dolly made and to see how the wig would look on her head that she pulled at Grandmother’s hand all the way home and couldn’t help wishing that Grandmother would walk faster or perhaps even run, instead of stopping to chat with her neighbors on the way.
It took a day or two to make the dolly, although Grandmother’s nimble fingers flew. And one night, after Patty had gone to bed, busy Uncle Charles drove down from the Farm and painted the dolly’s face, a pretty face, with rosy cheeks and gentle dark-brown eyes that Patty thought the loveliest she had ever seen.
At last the dolly was finished, and in her gay pink dress, with her soft brown curls that matched her brown eyes, Grandmother placed her in Patty’s outstretched arms.
‘I am so happy,’ said Patty, her face aglow, ‘I am so happy that I don’t know what to do.’
So, standing on tiptoe, Patty first kissed Grandmother and then the dolly and then Grandmother again. And perhaps, after all, that was the very best thing that she could do. Grandmother seemed to think so, at any rate.