She even dreamed about it at night: a beautiful, fat, yellow puppy came and got up by her on the bed and cuddled up against her and went to sleep. She felt its breathing. She actually saved some of her dinner, her bones, next day, and hid them, to feel that she had some food for it, though she was hungry herself. No puppy came, however, and she had to give it up and content herself with looking out for the puppy on the white gallery under the elm beyond the housetops.
II.
The big house, the back of which, with its double porticos and great white pillars, Molly could see away up on the hill across the intervening squares, was almost as different from the rickety tenement in which the little cripple lay as daylight is from darkness. It was on one of the highest points in the best part of the city, and was set back in grounds laid off with flower beds and surrounded by a high iron fence. In front it looked out on a handsome park, where fountains played, and at the back, while it looked over a very poor part of the town, filled with small, wretched looking houses, they were so far beneath it that they were almost as much separated from it as though they had been in another city. A high wall and a hedge quite shut off everything in that direction, and it was only from the upper veranda that one knew there was any part of the town on that side. Here, however, Mildred, the little girl that Molly saw with her doll and puppy, liked best to play.
Mildred was the daughter of Mr. Glendale, one of the leading men in the city, and she lived in this house in the winter. In the summer she lived in the country, in another house, quite as large as this, but very different. The city house was taller than that in the country, and had finer rooms and handsomer things. But, somehow, Mildred liked the place in the country best. The house in the country was long and had many rooms and curious corners with rambling passages leading to them. It was in a great yard with trees and shrubbery and flowers in it, with gardens about it filled with lilacs and rosebushes, and an orchard beyond, full of fruit trees. Green fields stretched all about it, where lambs and colts and calves played. And when in the country Mildred played out of doors all day long.
"MILDRED PLAYED OUT-OF-DOORS ALL DAY LONG"
The city Mildred did not like. She was a little lame and had to wear braces; but the doctors had always said she must be kept out of doors, and she would become strong and outgrow her lameness. Thus she had been brought up in the country, and knew every corner and cranny there. She knew where the robins and mocking-birds nested; the posts where the bluebirds made their homes and brought up their young, and the hollow locusts where the brown Jenny Wrens kept house, with doors so tiny that Mildred could not have gotten her hand in them. In town she felt constrained. There she had to be dressed up and taken to walk by her mammy. In the country she never thought of her lameness; but in town she could not help it. It was hard not to be able to run about and play games like the other children. Rough boys, too, would talk about the braces she had to wear, and sometimes would even laugh at her. So she was shy, and often thought herself very wretched. Her mother and her mammy used to tell her that she was better off than most little girls, but Mildred could not think so. At least, they did not have to wear braces, and could run about where they pleased and play games and slide down hills without any one scolding them for ruining their dresses or not being a lady. Mildred often wished she were not a lady, and, though efforts were made to satisfy her least whim, she was dissatisfied and unhappy.
A large playroom was set apart for her in town; and it was fitted up with everything that could be thought of. After the first few days it ceased to give her pleasure. The trouble was that it was all "fixed," her playthings were all "made playthings." She had to play according to rule; she could not do as she pleased. In the country she was free; she could run about the yard or garden, and play with the young birds and chickens and "live" things. One "live" thing was, in Mildred's eyes, worth all the "made" ones in the world; and if it was sick or crippled, she just loved it. A lame chicken that could not keep up with the rest of the brood, or a bird that had broken its wing falling out of the nest, was her pet and care. Her playroom in town was filled with dolls and toys of every size and kind, and in every condition, for a doll's condition is different from that of people; it depends not on the house it lives in and the wealth it has, but on the state of its body and features. Mildred's playhouse in the country was a corner of a closet, under the roof. There she used to have war with her mammy, for Mammy was very strict, and had severe ideas. So whenever a sick chicken or lame duck was found crying and tucked up in some of the doll's best dresses there was a battle. "I don't want dolls," Mildred would say. "It don't hurt a doll to break it; they don't care; and it don't help them to mend them; they can't grow. I want something I can get well and feed." Indeed, this was what her heart hungered for. What she wanted was company. She felt it more in the city than in the country. In town she had nothing but dolls. She used to think, "Oh, if I just had a chicken or a bird to pet and to love—something young and sweet!" The only place in town where she could do as she pleased was the upper back veranda. Thus she came to like it better than any other spot, and was oftenest there.