“Oh, I guess my unbreakable doll, Jane Anna, would be best for in the play,” Sue answered. “If you drop her, Helen, it won’t hurt.”
“No, and it won’t hurt much if our puppy dog gets hold of her,” added Helen. “Course our dog won’t come to the play and chew up any dolls, but he might get hold of one again when I’m practicing at home. I think the Jane Anna will be best.”
“I’ll get her for you,” offered Sue. But when she went to look for the doll for Helen, Jane Anna could not be found.
“I wonder where it is!” exclaimed Sue.
“Maybe your dog Splash chewed her up,” said Helen.
“No, he doesn’t chew dolls,” replied Sue. “He chews up my school books, and Bunny’s, but he doesn’t chew dolls.”
“I wish my dog would chew books,” went on Helen. “Then I wouldn’t have to study. Maybe he will chew them after he finds there isn’t any of my old doll left to bite.”
Sue looked in different places in the house for her unbreakable doll, but could not find it. She asked Lucile and Mart about it, when the brother and sister took a rest from the song which Lucile was to sing, though her brother had a part in it.
“Lost your doll, have you, Sue?” asked Mart. “Well, maybe she is hiding under the umbrella plant!”
“Oh, you’re teasing me!” said Sue, and that’s just what Mart was doing. For though Mrs. Brown did have an umbrella plant, and a rubber plant also, Sue’s doll was not under either one.
“The last time I saw you have your unbreakable doll was out in the hayloft of the barn,” said Lucile. “Don’t you remember? You were playing house with Sadie West.”
“O, now I remember!” cried Sue. “I left Jane Anna asleep in the hay in the corner of the loft. I’ll go out and get her for you, Helen. You wait here.”
So Helen sat down in a chair in the dining room while Sue ran out to the barn to look for her doll. Mart and Lucile began practicing the song again.
Now all this while Bunny Brown was swinging by his legs, upside downside on the trapeze. It seems to him a long while since he had started to hang head downward, but, really, it was not very long. For though it takes me quite a little while to tell you about it, really it all happened in a short while.
So Bunny Brown had not been swinging very long, head downward, before Sue ran out to the barn, or garage, whichever you like to call it, to look for her doll. Up the stairs into the loft, where Mart had fastened the trapeze, went Sue. She had just reached the top step and was wondering if her doll were really there when, all at once, Sue heard some one cry:
“Help me down! Help me down!”
“Oh, my!” was the little girl’s first thought, “can that by my doll?”
Then she knew it couldn’t be. For, though some dolls have inside them a little phonograph that can say words, Sue’s Jane Anna had nothing like this.