“Oh, it’s easy enough to tell that,” answered Susie. “That doll is yours, Beckie. It must be. You see, I have a wax doll, so I don’t need another. You have no wax doll and you want one.”
“Indeed I do, very much!” exclaimed Beckie.
“Then she is yours—take her,” went on the little rabbit girl. “I’m sure she is meant for you.”
“But who could have left her here?” asked Beckie wonderingly.
But Susie did not know this, nor did Beckie. But it would not surprise me the least bit if Santa Claus himself had dropped that doll in the hollow stump. You know he often comes around a few days before Christmas to see how things are getting on and to find out what boys and girls and animal children need. So I think it’s safe to say that Santa Claus left that doll in the hollow stump for Beckie.
Anyhow, the little bear girl clasped in her paws the lovely wax doll, and then she and Susie looked at her and made her open and shut her eyes, and they felt of the soft wax in the doll’s pink cheeks, and they were both happy, especially Beckie.
“Let’s go home!” exclaimed Susie. “I’ll get my wax doll and we’ll play house.”
“All right, we will!” said Beckie.
So she and Susie, the little rabbit girl, started back through the woods, Beckie carrying her new wax doll. Well, they hadn’t gone very far before, all of a sudden, out from behind a tree, sprang the bad old skillery-scalery alligator, and he popped out into the path, in front of Beckie and Susie, and he wound his long double-jointed tail around them so they couldn’t move and there he had them fast.
“Ah, ha!” cried the bad old alligator, blinking his fishy eyes, “now I have you both, and a little baby, too.”