Never before had she stayed so late.  But neither had she ever had such a lovely time.

Chapter VI The Little Lost Laugh

Sara had always intended to take her dolls with her to the Garden, but every morning before the sixth morning she forgot it.  On the sixth morning, however, her arms were so full of dolls that she could not take off her dimples.  She had not foreseen that difficulty.

She had not really intended to bring them all.  But the Brown Teddy-Bear looked so fiercely sad that she decided at the very outset that she could not leave him.  He was not really a doll, of course, but as Sara kept him dressed in a kerchief and full skirt, he had the effect of a doll—­a sort of Wolf-Grandmother-of-Red-Ridinghood doll.  And the Billiken looked so cheerful that Sara decided that she must surely take him along, to reward him for being so unfailingly pleasant.  And the Japanese doll had to go, because he was the newest, and because he was the only one who was large enough to wear the pink tulle lady-doll’s hat Sara’s aunt had sent her on her birthday.  His head was as bare as an egg, because the little rosette of black hair that distinguishes a Japanese doll had come unglued.  This made the effect of the hat a little odd; still, he could wear it.  The Kewpie was just too cunning to leave—­that was all there was to that; and no right-minded mother ever left the baby.  So that made it necessary to take the Baby doll with the long clothes. (That is, she should have been wearing long clothes, but Sara’s dolls never wore the clothes that belonged to them; and this morning the Baby was tastefully attired in a wide red sash, with the Japanese doll’s paper parasol stuck through it, like the dagger in a comic opera.)

So there was Sara, with five dolls in her arms, and the Snimmy shuddering deliciously from head to foot because he was beginning to smell dimples in his sleep.

“What in the world shall I do?” wondered Sara, half aloud.

“What in Zeelup, my dear,” corrected the Teacup, leaning out from her perch with sympathetic interest.

And then, what do you think the Teacup saw?  She saw the Kewpie, who was always a friendly little soul, reach up and take off Sara’s dimples himself!

“I’ll do it for Sara,” he said, helpfully, as he dropped them safely upon the whipped cream cushion.

And then what do you think happened?  Why, the daintiest little creature sprang right out from between Sara’s lips and went skipping and leaping and tumbling and running over the ice-cream bricks around the pool, across the blue plush grass, and, before you could tell it, disappeared around the turn of a little dim path Sara had never followed.

Sara stood gazing after him.  She had never seen anything that looked like that before.  Some of Avrillia’s children came nearest to looking like it:  but not even they were so tinkly or so bubbly or so altogether gay-looking.  And how nimble it was—­disappearing like a drop of water trickling down a rock!