“And I like my clothespin doll, too,” went on Beckie, for she did have a doll made of a clothespin, with inky eyes.
“I like my wax doll best of all,” said Susie. “My Uncle Wiggily Longears gave her to me last Christmas. Oh, she’s such a darling! Her cheeks are so pink and her eyes are so blue, and she can open and shut them, too, and she can say ‘Mamma’ and ‘Papa,’ when you push on a spring in her back.”
“Oh, I wish I had a wax doll!” exclaimed Beckie, the little girl bear, sort of sad-like. “But I don’t s’pose I’ll ever get one, even if Christmas is coming.”
Now, you boys needn’t go away just because you think there’s nothing but dolls in this story. I’m going to put in a real scary part pretty soon. In fact, it’s coming around the corner of my typewriter now and I’ll be up to it in a minute.
Well, Susie, the rabbit girl, and Beckie, the little bear girl, talked a lot more about dolls. I could write down what they said, but I guess you girls know pretty much what it was, anyhow, and as for the boys—well, I’ll just say that the two little animal girls kept on saying such things as, “Oh, she’s just too sweet for anything!” “She’s a darling!” “And she blinks her eyes so natural!” All doll-talk, you know.
Well, Beckie and Susie walked on through the woods, and pretty soon they came to a place where there was an old hollow stump. In the summer time a nice family of birds lived in it. They were some relation to Dickie Chip-Chip, the sparrow boy, but now all the birds had flown away down South, where it was nice and warm. For it was winter in bear-land, you know.
All the while Beckie Stubtail was wishing and wishing she had a wax doll, with real hair, and then, all of sudden, she looked at the old hollow stump, and, my goodness me sakes alive, and some molasses cookies, she saw a lovely wax doll there.
“Oh, look!” cried Beckie. “What a sweet doll. Whose can she be?”
“Why, she’s yours, of course,” said Susie with a smile, as she wiggled her long rabbit ears.
“Oh, I only wish she was!” cried Beckie, clapping her paws. “But how do you know?”