The Child grieved sorely and truly, a thing inexplicable to the Millionaire, to whom the rag-doll market was about as interesting as Bay State Gas; and to the Lady, the Child’s mother, who was all form—­that is, nearly all, as you shall see.

The Child cried inconsolably, and grew hollow-eyed, knock-kneed, spindling, and corykilverty in many other respects.  The Millionaire smiled and tapped his coffers confidently.  The pick of the output of the French and German toymakers was rushed by special delivery to the mansion; but Rachel refused to be comforted.  She was weeping for her rag child, and was for a high protective tariff against all foreign foolishness.  Then doctors with the finest bedside manners and stop-watches were called in.  One by one they chattered futilely about peptomanganate of iron and sea voyages and hypophosphites until their stop-watches showed that Bill Rendered was under the wire for show or place.  Then, as men, they advised that the rag-doll be found as soon as possible and restored to its mourning parent.  The Child sniffed at therapeutics, chewed a thumb, and wailed for her Betsy.  And all this time cablegrams were coming from Santa Claus saying that he would soon be here and enjoining us to show a true Christian spirit and let up on the pool-rooms and tontine policies and platoon systems long enough to give him a welcome.  Everywhere the spirit of Christmas was diffusing itself.  The banks were refusing loans, the pawn-brokers had doubled their gang of helpers, people bumped your shins on the streets with red sleds, Thomas and Jeremiah bubbled before you on the bars while you waited on one foot, holly-wreaths of hospitality were hung in windows of the stores, they who had ’em were getting their furs.  You hardly knew which was the best bet in balls—­three, high, moth, or snow.  It was no time at which to lose the rag-doll or your heart.

If Doctor Watson’s investigating friend had been called in to solve this mysterious disappearance he might have observed on the Millionaire’s wall a copy of “The Vampire.”  That would have quickly suggested, by induction, “A rag and a bone and a hank of hair.”  “Flip,” a Scotch terrier, next to the rag-doll in the Child’s heart, frisked through the halls.  The hank of hair!  Aha!  X, the unfound quantity, represented the rag-doll.  But, the bone?  Well, when dogs find bones they—­Done!  It were an easy and a fruitful task to examine Flip’s forefeet.  Look, Watson!  Earth—­dried earth between the toes.  Of course, the dog—­but Sherlock was not there.  Therefore it devolves.  But topography and architecture must intervene.

The Millionaire’s palace occupied a lordly space.  In front of it was a lawn close-mowed as a South Ireland man’s face two days after a shave.  At one side of it, and fronting on another street was a pleasaunce trimmed to a leaf, and the garage and stables.  The Scotch pup had ravished the rag-doll from the nursery, dragged it to a corner of the lawn, dug a hole, and buried it after the manner of careless undertakers.  There you have the mystery solved, and no checks to write for the hypodermical wizard or fi’-pun notes to toss to the sergeant.  Then let’s get down to the heart of the thing, tiresome readers—­the Christmas heart of the thing.