The titles being all decided upon, Dumps and Chris went back to their dolls, and Diddie began to write her first story.

“Nettie Herbert.”

“Nettie Herbert was a poor little girl;” and then she stopped and asked,

“Dumps, would you have Nettie Herbert a po’ little girl?”

“No, I wouldn’t have nobody er po’ little girl,” said Dumps, conclusively, and Diddie drew a line through what she had written, and began again.

“Nettie Herbert was a rich little girl, and she lived with her pa and ma in a big house in Nu Orlins; and one time her father give her a gold dollar, and she went down town, and bort a grate big wax doll with open and shet eyes, and a little cooking stove with pots and kittles, and a wuck box, and lots uv peices uv clorf to make doll cloes, and a bu-te-ful gold ring, and a lockit with her pas hare in it, and a big box full uv all kinds uv candy and nuts and razens and ornges and things, and a little git-ar to play chunes on, and two little tubs and some little iuns to wash her doll cloes with; then she bort a little wheelbarrer, and put all the things in it, and started fur home.  When she was going a long, presently she herd sumbody cryin and jes a sobbin himself most to deaf; and twas a poor little boy all barefooted and jes as hungry as he could be; and he said his ma was sick, and his pa was dead, and he had nine little sisters and seven little bruthers, and he hadnt had a mouthful to eat in two weeks, and no place to sleep, nor nuthin.  So Nettie went to a doctors house, and told him she would give him the gold ring fur some fyssick fur the little boys muther; and the doctor give her some castor-oil and parrygorick, and then she went on tell they got to the house, and Nettie give her the fyssick, and some candy to take the taste out of her mouth, and it done her lots uv good; and she give all her nuts and candy to the poor little chillen.  And she went back to the man what sold her the things, and told him all about it; and he took back all the little stoves and tubs and iuns and things she had bort, and give her the money, and she carried it strait to the poor woman, and told her to buy some bread and cloes for her chillen.  The poor woman thanked her very much, and Nettie told em good-by, and started fur home.”

Here Diddie stopped suddenly and said,

“Come here a little minute, Dumps; I want you to help me wind up this tale.”  Then, after reading it aloud, she said, “You see, I’ve only got six mo’ lines of paper, an’ I haven’t got room to tell all that happened to her, an’ what become of her.  How would you wind up, if you were me?”

“I b’lieve I’d say, she furgive her sisters, an’ married the prince, an’ lived happy ever afterwards, like ‘Cinderilla an’ the Little Glass Slipper.’”

“Oh, Dumps, you’re such er little goose; that kind of endin’ wouldn’t suit my story at all,” said Diddie; “but I’ll have to wind up somehow, for all the little girls who read the book will want to know what become of her, an’ there’s only six lines to wind up in; an’ she’s only a little girl, an’ she can’t get married; besides, there ain’t any prince in Nu Orlins.  No, somethin’ will have to happen to her.  I tell you, I b’lieve I’ll make a runaway horse run over her goin’ home.”