Katy shook her head. "I wouldn't want to buy a Christmas present for myself," she answered. "But I was wishing—only there is really no use in wishing; still, just supposing there was—I was thinking if I could only get that doll for Ellie, how happy she would be. You know she has to be alone so much, and she gets awful blue sometimes; though she won't let on, 'cause it would fret mother. But the doll would be great company for her. We've neither of us ever had one."
She continued to gaze longingly at the rosy beauty, while the salesgirl meditatively dusted the show-case.
"Stop! I'll tell you how you can manage to get it," Julia said, suddenly. "It's the rule of this store that on Christmas Eve, after all the customers are gone, each employee may choose as a present from the firm some article worth a quarter of his or her wages for the week. Let's see: you're paid three dollars, aren't you?"
Katy nodded.
"That would count for seventy-five cents on the doll; then all you would have to put to it would be twenty-two cents. Couldn't you do that somehow?"
"Yes!" cried Katy, delighted. "Sometimes I run errands for a dressmaker who lives in the block below us, and she gives me pennies, or once in a while a nickel. And when my aunt's husband comes to see us—he's a widder man and sorter rich; he drives a truck,—well, when he comes 'casionally, he gives each of us children as much as ten cents; and I guess he'll be round about Christmas time. Oh, yes, I'm almost sure I can make up the twenty-two cents!"
"But, then, when the doll is yours, won't you hate to give it away?" queried Julia; for Katy already began to assume an air of possession.
"Oh, not to Ellie! And, you know, she'll be sure to let me hold it sometimes" was the ingenuous reply.
The quick tears sprang to the salesgirl's eyes, and she turned abruptly away, to arrange some dolls upon the shelves behind her.
"After all, love is better than riches," she reflected, as the picture of the crippled child in the humble home arose in her mind, and she gave a sidelong glance at Katy's thin face and shabby dress.