Her mother gave her some cookies and some bread and butter, and with her toy set of dishes Mary soon had a table set on a box on the porch, and the two dolls were propped up in front of it, while Jan and Mary fed them—make-believe, of course.
“Me’s hungry, too,” said Trouble, as he saw the things to eat.
“Well, you can’t have any now, because you’re not a doll,” said Jan. “After the dolls eat then you can, Trouble dear.”
Baby William seemed to be thinking about this. It did not seem just fair that a real flesh-and-blood chap should have to wait until some dolls, who didn’t have any teeth, got through with their make-believe eating. Then, while Jan and Mary were busy pretending their dolls were eating and talking like grown-up people, Trouble toddled out into the kitchen.
His sister and her playmate did not pay much attention to him, and a little later the two girls thought they would play another game—that of “dress up like ladies.” To do this Mary had to get some old, long skirts from the attic, and Jan went with her to help pick them out.
“Now you’ll be Mrs. Martin and I’ll be Mrs. Seaton,” Mary explained, when they were down on the porch again, ready for the new game. “And we’ll take our dolls—they’ll be our children you know——”
“But where is my doll?” cried Jan suddenly, as she looked around. “She’s gone! Oh, my lovely Flo doll is lost!”
There was only one doll at the play-party table on the porch, and that was Mary’s. Jan’s doll was gone, and so were some of the cookies that had been on the toy plate in front of her.
CHAPTER XIII
TED AND HIS KITE
The two little girls stood and looked and looked and looked. Then they looked once more to make sure that the missing doll was not somewhere on the porch—in a corner perhaps. But Flo was nowhere in sight.