"I am so glad you called to me," Helen said, when he was close. "I was just wishing for some one to go with me for a ride in the country. Would you like to come?"
"Gee," returned the urchin, "I'll say I would."
"Do you think your mother would be willing for you to go?"
"Lord, yes—ma, she ain't a-carin' where we kids are jest so's we ain't under her feet when she's a-workin'."
"And could you find Maggie, do you think? Perhaps she would enjoy the ride, too."
Bobby lifted up his voice in a shrill yell, "Mag! Oh—oh—Mag!"
The excited cry was caught up by the watching children, and the neighborhood echoed their calls. "Mag! Oh, Mag! Somebody wants yer, Mag! Come a-runnin'. Hurry up!"
Their united efforts were not in vain. From the rear of a near-by house little Maggie appeared. A dirty, faded old shawl was wrapped about her tiny waist, hiding her bare feet and trailing behind. A sorry wreck of a hat trimmed with three chicken feathers crowned her uncombed hair, and the ragged remnants of a pair of black cotton gloves completed her elegant costume. In her thin little arms she held, with tender mother care, a doll so battered and worn by its long service that one wondered at the imaginative power of the child who could make of it anything but a shapeless bundle of dirty rags.
"Get a move on yer, Mag!" yelled the masterful Bobby, with frantic gestures. "The princess lady is a-goin' t' take us fer a ride in her swell limerseen with her driver 'n' everything."
For one unbelieving moment, little Maggie turned to the two miniature ladies who, in costumes that rivaled her own, had come to ask the cause of this unseemly disturbance of their social affair. Then, at another shout from her brother, she discarded her finery and, holding fast to her doll with true mother instinct, hurried timidly to the waiting automobile.