The other little girl had disappeared. Suddenly she came out of one of the yards, clasping a Teddy-bear and a whole family of dolls in her fat arms. She sat down at the puddle’s edge and began to undress them. Maida idly watched the busy little fingers—one, two, three, four, five—now there were six shivering babies. What was she going to do with them? Maida wondered.
“Granny,” Maida called, “do come and see this little girl! She’s—” But Maida did not finish that sentence in words. It ended in a scream. For suddenly the little girl threw the Teddy-bear and all the six dolls into the puddle. Maida ran out the door. Half-way across the court she met Dicky Dore swinging through the water. Between them they fished all the dolls out. One was of celluloid and another of rubber—they had floated into the middle of the pond. Two china babies had sunk to the very bottom—their white faces smiled placidly up through the water at their rescuers. A little rag-doll lay close to the shore, water-logged. A pretty paper-doll had melted to a pulp. And the biggest and prettiest of them, a lovely blonde creature with a shapely-jointed body and a bisque head, covered with golden curls, looked hopelessly bedraggled.
“Oh, Betsy Hale!” Dicky said. “You naughty, naughty girl! How could you drown your own children like that?”
“I were divin’ them a baff,” Betsy explained.
Betsy was a little, round butterball of a girl with great brown eyes all tangled up in eyelashes and a little pink rosebud of a mouth, folded over two rows of mice-teeth. She smiled deliciously up into Maida’s face:
“I aren’t naughty, is I?” she asked.
“Naughty? You bunny-duck! Of course you are,” Maida said, giving her a bear-hug. “I don’t see how anybody can scold her,” she whispered to Dicky.
“Scold her! You can’t,” Dicky said disgustedly. “She’s too cute. And then if you did scold her it wouldn’t do any good. She’s the naughtiest baby in the neighborhood—although,” he added with pride, “I think Delia’s going to be pretty nearly as naughty when she gets big enough. But Betsy Hale—why, the whole street has to keep an eye on her. Come, pick up your dollies, Betsy,” he wheedled, “they’ll get cold if you leave them out here.”
The thought of danger to her darlings produced immediate activity on Betsy’s part. She gathered the dolls under her cape, hugging them close. “Her must put her dollies to bed,” she said wisely.
“Calls herself her half the time,” Dicky explained. He gathered up the dresses and shooing Betsy ahead of him, followed her into the yard.