[Illustration:  MARY RETURNS THE DOLL]

Miss Terry did not take the doll.

“I am Angelina,” she said.  “The doll was mine.”

“You!  Angelina!” the child’s face was full of bewilderment.  Mechanically she drew Miranda to her and clasped her close.

“Yes, I am Angelina, and that was my doll Miranda,” said Miss Terry gently.  “Thank you for returning her.  But Mary,—­your name is Mary?” The child nodded.—­“Suppose I wanted you to keep her for me, what would you say?”

Mary’s eyes still dwelt upon Miss Terry with a puzzled look.  This gray-haired Angelina was so different from the one she had pictured.  She did not answer the question.  Miss Terry drew the child to a chair beside her.

“Tell me all about yourself, Mary,” she said.

After some coaxing and prompting from what they already guessed, Mary told the story of her sad little life.

She was an orphan recently left to the care of her uncle and aunt, who had received her grudgingly.  They were her sole relatives; and the shame of their degraded lives was plain through the outlines of the vague picture which Mary sketched of them.

“You do not love them, Mary?” asked Miss Terry kindly.

“No,” answered the child.  “They always speak crossly to me.  When they have been drinking they beat me.”

Tom rose from the table with a muttered word and began to pace the floor.  His blue eyes were full of tears.

“Mary,” said Miss Terry, “will the people at home be worried if you do not come back to dinner?”

Mary shook her head wonderingly.  “No,” she said.  “They will not care.  I am often away on holidays.  I go to the Museums.”

“Then I want you to stay with us to-day,” said Miss Terry.  “We are going to have a Christmas celebration, and we need you for a guest.  Will you stay, you and Miranda?”

Mary looked down at the doll in her arms, and up at the two kind faces bent toward her.  “Yes,” she said impulsively, “I will stay.  How good you are!  I don’t want to go home.”

“Don’t go home!” burst out Tom.  “Stay with us always and be our little girl.”

Mary looked from one to the other, half frightened at the new idea.  Miss Terry bent and pecked at her cheek, with a thrill at the new sensation.

“Yes, we mean it,” she said, and her voice was almost sweet.  “We believe that the Christmas Angel has brought you to us, Mary.  You have the Christmas name.  But you seem to us like the little girl we both knew best, little Angelina with blue eyes and yellow hair, who was Miranda’s mother.  Will you stay with us, Mary Angelina?  Would you like to stay?”

Mary looked up with a wistful smile.  “You are so good!” she said again.  “I wish I could stay.  But Uncle and Aunt are so—­I am afraid of what they might do to us all.  If they thought you wanted me, they would not let me go.”

“I will fix Uncle and Aunt,” said Tom, going for his coat.  “Leave them to me.  I know an argument that settles uncles and aunts of that sort.  You need not go back to their house, I promise you, Mary, my dear.”