“Yes’m, only he’s going to be our Uncle Ben now,” answered the little girl. “He’s getting better, and we’re all well. And say, Mrs. Kent, when you get through churning will you please give me back my rubber doll?”
“Give you back your rubber doll! Gracious me, child! what do you mean? I haven’t your rubber doll!”
“Yes, you have,” insisted Jan, with a funny little smile.
“Why, no, dear, I haven’t.”
“You can’t see her,” said Janet. “She’s in the butter.”
“In the butter!”
“I—I just dropped her in the churn,” explained the little girl. “You left the cover off, and I looked in to see if the butter had come, and my rubber doll slipped, and now she—now she’s in the churn!”
Mrs. Kent quickly lifted off the cover, which Janet had put partly back on, and as she did so she cried:
“There she is! Oh, Janet!”
“Oh, it won’t hurt her,” said Janet easily. “She’s a rubber doll, you know, and water or milk, or even butter, won’t hurt her. You can give her back to me after you make the butter.”