"Oh, Sammy! big enough to carry us?" gasped Tess, clasping her hands.
"Er—well—now," hesitated Sammy, whose own imagination was hampered by a very practical streak in his character. "That would be some airship, wouldn't it? To carry us. It would have to be pretty big, and the wire'd have to be awful strong."
"Oh, it wouldn't be flying, then," sighed Tess.
"But say!" he exclaimed more eagerly, "couldn't we fly your dolls in it—yours and Dot's?"
"Oh!"
The screen door slammed behind them. "No," declared a serious and very decisive voice. "You sha'n't fly my Alice-doll like a kite, Sammy Pinkney. So there!"
They turned to the dark, fairy-like little girl who had appeared fresh from her afternoon toilet at the hands of Mrs. MacCall, the old Scotch housekeeper who loved the Corner House girls as though they were her own.
Dot, as usual, clung tightly to the pink-faced, fair-haired doll which of all her "children" was her favorite. The Alice-doll had been through so many adventures, and suffered such peril and disaster, that Dot could scarcely bear that she should be out of her sight for fear some new calamity would happen to her.
Therefore Dot said quite firmly: