“How lovely they are!” she murmured to herself, including even the plainest and least among them in her appreciation of the gorgeous company.  “Don’t I wish Ellie could see them!” she continued.  “I’ll have to count them, so as to tell her how many there are; for I don’t believe that by herself she could imagine such a lot of dolls together.”

Katy and Ellie had never had a doll in their lives,—­that is, a real boughten one, as they called those not of home manufacture.

The kind salesgirl who had sent the orange to Ellie, from her post behind the counter, noticed the child’s wonderment.

“Will you look at Cash!” she said to a companion.  Katy was oblivious of them, however.  After watching her a few moments, Julia called out: 

“Well, Cash, which do you like best?”

The little girl looked the dolls over again with much deliberation; and finally, pointing to a good-sized one, with golden hair and large eyes, said: 

“This.”

“Oh, one of those ninety-seven cent dolls!” responded Julia.  “They are handsome for the price.  Sawdust bodies, to be sure; but what fine heads?—­red cheeks, splendid eyes, and hair that will comb out as well as that of some costlier ones, I’ll be bound.”

“Ninety-seven cents!” repeated Katy, with a sigh.  It was an unattainable sum, as far as she was concerned.  The salesgirl remarked the sigh.

“Say, Cash, why don’t you buy it?” she urged.  “Your mother’ll let you keep part of your wages for yourself Christmas week, won’t she?  And you wouldn’t get such another bargain in a doll if you hunted a year and a day.  You’d better speak for it quick, though; for when the rush of trade comes, there’s no knowing how long the lot will last.”

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?”