“Oh, yes,” said Davie with a sigh of relief, looking down at it.
“But in flying down the long steps at last, Towsle caught one of his feet in the doll’s dress, and over he rolled from the top to the bottom. But he wouldn’t give up the doll. And then I heard the noise, and I ran out from the garden, and before Mother and Uncle John and Sister got there, I seized the doll, and Towsle pulled and I pulled—and there,” Miss Parrott turned the doll over in her lap, “the silk gown was torn. You can scarcely see the place, for our mother mended it so neatly.”
The Pepper children bent over to scan closely the rent in the back of the checked silk gown.
“I shouldn’t know it was mended,” declared Polly at last.
“No, would you?” said Miss Parrott, with bright eyes. “Our mother was a most beautiful sewer. Well, we couldn’t help laughing, Towsle was so funny, and he tried to get that doll away from me after I had at last torn it from him. And then Sister cried right out, ‘Oh, our poor doll!’—and then I cried over her, and we petted her up. And we said we’d love her forever after.”
“That was nice,” said Polly, smoothing down her gown in great satisfaction.
“And we called her ‘Priscilla,’ and we took her to bed with us every night,” finished Miss Parrott.
CHAPTER XV
“AND SEE MY SLATE”
“WAS Towsle your very own dog?” asked Polly breathlessly.
“Yes, Sister’s and mine,” said Miss Parrott. “You see one day he belonged to me, and the next to her. And one night he slept on the foot of her bed, and the next on mine. And he never made a mistake—when he saw us get into our nightgowns.”