The Chronicles of Rhoda

by Florence Tinsley Cox

Then it was not for me. Nobody ever seemed to think that I was good, not even when I was trying my best. It must be grand to be good! Just think of being born that way, so that you could not help it, but went on growing better and better until you died! There was a little girl down the street like that. We played together on sunny days. I found it very hard to play with any one who was so good.

"And sometimes," my father went on, still with that smile in his eyes, "sometimes she's so dreadfully bad that I'm really shocked!"

"Oh!" I said again.

I had seen my father shocked. When he was shocked, he always laughed very hard.

"Has it pictures, father?" I asked, meekly, trying to turn the subject.

"No. My little friend doesn't care about pictures," he answered, indifferently.

Then it was not for me. I was very fond of pictures. Everybody knew that. It did seem queer that in all the many packages which he brought home, night after night,—round ones, and square ones, and even some with mysterious humpy corners,—there should not be a single thing for Rhoda! And Christmas was coming faster and faster.

Evelyn, too, had all manner of pretty presents laid by for other little girls, quite strange little girls, who did not love her at all so far as I could see, but she never said a word about my present; not even one day when she called me into her house and opened her parlor door. She opened it very softly, as if there were company, and she put her finger on her lip that I should not speak.

There was company. Inside the room was filled with dolls! They sat in rows on the sofa and on the piano, they lay in careless heaps on the chairs and tables; blue-eyed dolls and black-eyed dolls, some that went promptly to sleep when you laid them down, some in Japanese dresses, and some that wore long clothes and caps like sure enough babies. We went about solemnly, hand in hand, and looked at them all. They stared back as if they wanted a mother, and one on the center-table, a queen of a doll with earrings in her ears, held out her arms to come to me!