The letter once written, and waved up and down under the desk to dry, the paper was pinned into her pocket again, and when the next pair of mittens she knit were done, pressed, caught together with a bit of yarn, and sent up, by her, to the trunk, the daring and odd little note was slipped safely inside one of them, and lay there several months undiscovered.
One bitter cold day, at the end of the next November, a young man came hastily into John Jackson's shop in St. Joseph.
"Hullo!" he said. "I want a pair of those knit mittens of yours. I'm ordered off to the Denver station, and they do say it's colder 'n blazes there. Handling express packages ain't real warm work anyhow!"
And so, while little Nancy, washing potatoes for dinner, wondered who had got her mitten with the letter in it, Joe Harris, Adams Express Agent for Denver, was cramming the pair into his pocket. The next week a snow-squall with a gale and a half of wind swooped down on Denver with all fury, and the new agent's teeth chattered and his hands smarted as he stood waiting for the train that had just whistled; he pulled the heavy mittens out of his overcoat pocket, twitched them apart, and sticking his left hand into one of them, found the note. He had no time to look at it then, for there was work on hand; but that evening, in the bare little room at the hotel, he took the letter out of his pocket, and, big strong man that he was, two great tears hopped out of his eyes on to the eager, anxious little letter.
"By jinks! she shall have her dolly!" he exclaimed, fetching his fist down on the rickety table, where his lamp stood, with a thump that almost sent lamp and all to the floor. But how to get it? Denver was no place then, whatever it is now, to buy dolls, and Joe was much disturbed at it; but it happened that the very next week he was recalled to St. Louis on some business which must be seen to in person; so, just as soon as his errand was done, he went about to all the toy-shops until he was satisfied at last with a doll. And well he might be! the dolly was of bisque, with movable eyes and real golden hair, joints in her arms and legs, and a face almost as lovely as a real baby; for a baby doll it was, in long clothes, with little corals to tie up its sleeves, and tiny socks on its feet. Joe had it boxed up carefully, directed to Miss Nancy Peck, at Bassett, Vermont, and then stepped into the express office, told the story, and read the letter. The Superintendent had little girls of his own.
"It shall go free all the way there," he said, and wrote on the outside: "Pass along the dolly, boys! get it there by Christmas, sure. Free. X.Y.Z."
So the doll-baby began its journey; and the story Joe Harris told at St. Louis was told and retold from one messenger to another, and many a smile did it rouse on the tired faces; and here one man tied on a gold dollar wrapped in paper and tucked in under the box lid, and there another added a box of candy, and another a bundle of gay calico for a child's dress, and one a picture-book, each labelled "Merry Christmas for Nancy," till the agent at the last large town had to put all the things into a big box, and pack the corners with oranges.
Can any words tell what Nancy thought when that box climbed up to her from Bassett on Mr. Tucker's wagon—the very same wagon that brought her from the poor-house? Luckily for her, Miss Roxy could not leave her bed, where she had lain a month now with acute rheumatism; for when she heard Nancy's story she was angry enough to box her ears well, and did scold furiously, and call the poor child many a bad name for her "brazen impudence," as she called it. But what did Nancy care when at last, with an old hatchet, she had pried off the box lid, and discovered its hidden treasures! Miss Roxy was glad enough of a sweet ripe orange, and stopped scolding to eat it at once; but Nancy could not look at another thing when the doll box was opened at last, and the lovely sleeping baby discovered. The child could not speak. She threw her apron over her head, and ran into the garret. Miss Roxy smiled grimly under her orange.