“You can hold my doll if you want to,” offered Vi.  “I’m going to coast like the boys do, and I can’t hold her.”

“Well, you had better leave your doll in the barn,” said Dick.  “I might lose her if I took her.”

Vi stretched out face downward on the sled, to ride “boy fashion,” and, of course, she couldn’t hold her doll that way.  So she left the toy in a warm place in the hay in the barn.

Rose, Vi and Margy had great sport coasting on the hill, and they were thinking of going in and getting some of Grandma Ford’s good bread and jam when Margy cried: 

“Oh, my doll!  Where’s my doll?  She’s gone.  She went sliding downhill all by herself, and now she’s gone!  Oh, dear!” And Margy began to cry.

CHAPTER XV

JINGLING BELLS

Dick came running out of the barn.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.  “Are any of you hurt?”

But as soon as he asked that he could see that none of the three little Bunker girls was hurt, for they all stood on the hill beside the two sleds.

“What’s the matter?” asked Dick again, for he could see that Margy was crying, and crying hard.

“She’s lost her doll,” explained Rose.  “I guess it dropped in the snow.  Could you find it for her?  It’s a Japanese doll, and we got her out of the ocean.”

“Out of the ocean!” exclaimed Dick.  “Well, if you got her out of the ocean I suppose I can get her out of a snow bank.  For I guess that’s where your doll is now, Margy.  Don’t cry!  I’ll try to find her.”

Dick loved children, and, as it was rather lonesome at Great Hedge, he was very glad the six little Bunkers had come with their father and mother to stay until Spring.

“Where did you lose your doll, Margy?” asked Dick, stooping down and leaning over the little girl, who was crying so hard now that she could hardly see on account of her tears.

“Oh, I—­I—­don’t know,” she sobbed.  “I—­I had her in my arms, and I was giving her a nice ride and, all of a sudden, I didn’t have her any m-more.”

“I guess she slipped out when you went over a bump, or something like that,” said Dick.  “But, as I said, if you found her in the ocean, I guess we can find her when she’s only in a snow bank.  I never saw the ocean.  Is it very big?”

“Terrible big,” answered Rose.  “We were down at Cousin Tom’s, and a box was washed up on shore and some Japanese dolls were in it.  We each have one—­all except Russ and Laddie, ’cause they’re too big to play with dolls.  But now Margy’s is lost.  But we’ve two more home, Margy, ’cause there were half a dozen in the box, and you can have one of them.”

“Don’t want them!” exclaimed Margy.  “I want my own doll that I had on the sled.  Where is she?” And Margy cried harder than ever.

“We’ll look,” said Dick.

He went into the barn and came out again with a big wooden rake.  In summer the rake was used to clean the lawn.  But now it was to be used in the snow.