“You horrid old thing!” she said.  “Ain’t you ashamed to fool me so?  Ain’t you ashamed to make me think you was a lovely doll with pretty clo’es and white kid shoes? Ain’t you?”

She shook Miranda again until her eyeballs rattled in her head.  The doll fell to the floor and lay there with closed eyes.  Her face was pallid and ghastly.  Her bonnet had fallen off, and her hair stuck out wildly in every direction.  Her legs were doubled under her in the most helpless fashion.  She was the forlornest figure of a doll imaginable.  Presently Mary drew her hands away from her eyes and looked down at Miranda.  There was something in the doll’s attitude as she lay there which touched the little girl’s heart.  Once she had seen a woman who had been injured in the street,—­she would never forget it.  The poor creature’s eyes had been closed, and her face, under the fallen bonnet, was of this same pasty color.  Mary shuddered.  Suddenly she felt a warm rush of pity for the doll.

“You poor old thing!” she exclaimed, looking at Miranda almost tenderly.  “I’m sorry I shook you.  You look so tired and sad and homesick!  I wonder if somebody is worrying about you this minute.  It was very wicked of me to take you away—­on Christmas Eve, too!  I wish I had left you where I found you.  Maybe some little girl is crying now because you are lost.”

Mary stooped and lifted the doll gently upon her knees.  As she took Miranda up, the blue eyes opened and seemed to look full at her.  Miranda’s one beauty was her eyes.  Mary felt her heart grow warmer and warmer toward the quaint stranger.

“You have lovely eyes,” she murmured.  “I think after all you are almost pretty.  Perhaps I should grow to like you awfully.  You are not a bit like the doll I hoped to have; but that is not your fault.”  A thought made her face brighten.  “Why, if you had been a beautiful doll they would have taken you away and sold you for rum.”  Her face expressed utter disgust.  She hugged Miranda close with a sudden outburst of affection.  “Oh, you dear old thing!” she cried.  “I am so glad you are—­just like this.  I am so glad, for now I can keep you always and always, and no one will want to take you away from me.”

She rocked to and fro, holding the doll tightly to her heart.  Mary was not one to feel a half-passion about anything.  “I will make you some new dresses,” she said, fingering the old-fashioned silk with a puzzled air.  “I wonder why your mother dressed you so queerly?  She was not much of a sewer if she made this bonnet!” Scornfully she took off the primitive bonnet and smoothed out the tangled hair.  “I wonder what you have on underneath,” she said.

With gentle fingers she began to undress Miranda.  Off came the green silk dress with its tight “basque” and overskirt.  Off came the ruffled petticoat and little chemise edged with fine lace.  And Miranda stood in shapeless, kid-bodied ugliness, which stage of evolution the doll of her day had reached.