All the children were invited to come on Saturday and see the wonderful doll, and Randy Helen Weston was made to open and shut her lovely eyes, to turn her head, to extend her beautifully jointed arm to her callers; to cry, to stand alone upon her daintily-slippered feet, and, in fact, to astonish them as much as possible and allow them to depart, glad of Prue’s happiness, or green with envy, according as their dispositions prompted them.

Prue was wild with delight, and was about to print a letter for Randy, when it was proposed at school that the long letter from her schoolmates should be written and little Prue was invited to have a part in it.

The letter was a most amusing one, and Randy and Helen laughed heartily as they saw the characteristics of the writers, as manifest, as if each had been present.

They had taken half sheets of paper and pasted the ends together so that a long strip of writing paper was obtained.  Then each friend had written and signed his contribution, and truly the result was unique.  Prue had been given ample space for her part of what she termed the “party letter,” and with great care she printed it.  Her spelling was phonetic.

“DEAR RANDY:—­Nobudy ever had a dolly so lovely as mine you sended me.  I ust tu take Tabby tu bed wiv me but now I take mi dolly. 1 day Tabby washed her hare, I meen my dollys hare I gess she thort it waz 1 of her kittns.  Tabbys got tu kittns.  They has not got thay ize open yet, so I tryd tu pick um opn, but arnt Prudence sed that wood be cruil.  If thay cant git thay ize opn thayselfs why aint I good tu pick um opn wiv my fingus

    “Yor little
    PRUE.”

“What will Prue do next, I wonder?” said Randy.

“The idea of thinking that because those little cats could not open their eyes, it would be a fine idea to ‘pick’ them open!”

Randy pitied those kittens, but she could not help laughing as she thought of Prue’s efforts to help them.

“She is probably wild to have those kittens see her new doll,” said Miss Dayton.

The long letter from her schoolmates at home had reached Randy on a stormy Saturday morning, when the wind was blowing the snow against the windows with such force that it sounded like hail.  She thought of the horses harnessed to the rough snow ploughs “breaking out” the roads at home, of the pine trees laden with what looked to be giant masses of white fruit, of the snow-capped mountains and of little Prue, with hood and mittens, at play with Johnny Buffum, and she wished to be borne there by some magician, if only for a moment, that she might see it all as she had seen it, ever since she could remember.

Randy was, from the first, one of the most promising scholars at the private school which she had entered a week after her arrival in Boston, and her letters to father and mother, Aunt Prudence and to her friends at the little district school were full of enthusiasm for study and ambition to excel.