The children suddenly lost interest in the game of hide-and-go-to-seek. Freddie thought no more of spying Flossie or Helen. Flossie no longer cared about hiding down between the two logs, and Helen did not care about anything but the white dress she was holding up as she scrambled out of the hollow stump.
"It's my doll's dress!" she said over and over again. "It's my lost doll's dress!"
"Are you sure?" asked Flossie, as she shook the leaves from her dress and hair, and came over to her friend.
"Course I'm sure!" answered Helen. "Look, here's a place where I mended the dress after Mollie tore it when she was playing with Grace Lavine's dollie one day."
Mollie hadn't really torn her dress. Helen had done it herself lifting her pet out of the doll carriage, but she liked to pretend the doll had done it.
"Let's see the torn place," said Flossie, and Helen showed where a hole had been sewed together.
"I 'member it," Helen went on, "'cause I sewed it crooked. I can sew better now. It's my doll's dress all right."
"It's all wet," said Freddie, who, though a boy, was not too old to be interested in dolls, though he did not play with them. "Maybe the gypsies live around here," he went on, "and they washed your doll's dress and hung it on the stump to dry."
"Maybe!" agreed Helen, who was ready to believe anything, now that she had found something belonging to her doll.
"No gypsies live around here," said Flossie, "'cause we haven't seen any. But maybe they live in the cave."