“Oh, did he take her?” cried Violet. “If he did I’ll never speak to him again and——”
“Now, wait a minute!” advised Russ. “You girls always get so excited! I didn’t say Henry took your doll. I just met him and he said he saw a dog running out of our yard with something in his mouth. Maybe it was the dog that took your doll, Violet.”
“Oh! Oh!” cried the little girl, and she was now sobbing in real earnest.
“Oh, the dog will eat up Esmeralda!” and Margy added her tears to those of Violet.
“I’ll go down the street and look for her,” quickly offered Russ. He was a kind boy that way. Of course he didn’t care for dolls, and he was anxious to start making the seesaw, nails for which he and Rose had gone after. But Russ was willing to give up his own pleasure to help his little sister.
“I’ll get your doll,” he said. “I guess that dog wouldn’t carry her far after he found out she wasn’t a bone or something good to eat.”
“She—she—she’s a nice doll, anyhow, so there!” sobbed Violet. “An’—an’ I—I want her!”
“I guess I can find her,” offered Russ. “Here, Rose, you hold the nails.”
Russ started on a run toward the front gate. Mrs. Bunker and the three girls followed. As yet Laddie and Mun Bun had not heard the excitement over the missing doll, for they were still in the back yard, “digging down to China.”
Russ reached the gate, looked down the road in the direction Henry Miller had told him the dog had run with something in its mouth, and then Russ cried: