"Now you just wait, Miss Chicken!" said Mickey.
Then he brushed her hair and put on a new pink ribbon, not so large as those she had, but much more becoming. He laid a soft warm little gray sweater with white collar and cuffs in reach, and in turning it she discovered a handkerchief and a pair of gloves in one pocket. Immediately she searched the other and produced a purse with five pennies in it. Then for no reason at all, Peaches began to cry.
"Well Miss Chicken!" exclaimed Mickey in surprise, "I thought you'd be pleased!"
"Pleased!" sobbed Peaches. "Pleased! Mickey, I'm dam—I'm busted!"
"Oh well then, go on and cry, if you want to," agreed Mickey. "But you'd look much nicer to show Mrs. Harding and Peter if you wouldn't!"
Peaches immediately wiped her eyes. Mickey lifted and carried her back to the porch, placing her in a pillow-piled big chair. Then he put the gloves on her hands, set a hat on her head and tied the pink ribbons. Peaches both laughed and cried at that, while the Harding family came in because they could not wait. Mickey raised and put in Peaches' shaking fingers the crowning glory of any small girl: a wonderful little pink parasol. Peaches appeared for a minute as if a faint were imminent.
"Now do you see why I couldn't come with a poetry piece when my head was so full of these things?"
"Yes Mickey, but you will before night?" she begged.
"You want it even now?" he marvelled.
"More 'an the passol, even!" she declared.