There lay a doll, flat on her back, looking up at them brightly out of her blue eyes.

“Well, Debby dear,” said Aunt Abigail, taking her up gently.  “It’s a good long time since you and I played under the lilac bushes, isn’t it?  I expect you’ve been pretty lonesome up here all these years.  Never you mind, you’ll have some good times again, now.”  She pulled down the doll’s full, ruffled skirt, straightened the lace at the neck of her dress, and held her for a moment, looking down at her silently.  You could tell by the way she spoke, by the way she touched Deborah, by the way she looked at her, that she had loved the doll very dearly, and maybe still did, a little.

When she put Deborah into Betsy’s arms, the child felt that she was receiving something very precious, almost something alive.  She and Ellen looked with delight at the yards and yards of picot-edged ribbon, sewed on by hand to the ruffles of the skirt, and lifted up the silk folds to admire the carefully made, full petticoats and frilly drawers, the pretty, soft old kid shoes and white stockings.  Aunt Abigail looked at them with an absent smile on her lips, as though she were living over old scenes.

[Illustration:  Betsy and Ellen and the old doll.]

Finally, “It’s too cold to play up here,” she said, coming to herself with a long breath.  “You’d better bring Deborah and the trunk down into the south room.”  She carried the doll, and Betsy and Ellen each took an end of the old trunk, no larger than a modern suitcase.  They settled themselves on the big couch, back of the table with the lamp.  Old Shep was on it, but Betsy coaxed him off by putting down some bones Cousin Ann had been saving for him.  When he finished those and came back for the rest of his snooze, he found his place occupied by the little girls, sitting cross-legged, examining the contents of the trunk, all spread out around them.  Shep sighed deeply and sat down with his nose resting on the couch near Betsy’s knee, following all their movements with his kind, dark eyes.  Once in a while Betsy stopped hugging Deborah or exclaiming over a new dress long enough to pat Shep’s head and fondle his ears.  This was what he was waiting for, and every time she did it he wagged his tail thumpingly against the floor.

After that Deborah and her trunk were kept downstairs where Betsy could play with her.  And often she was taken to school.  You never heard of such a thing as taking a doll to school, did you?  Well, I told you this was a queer, old-fashioned school that any modern School Superintendent would sniff at.  As a matter of fact, it was not only Betsy who took her doll to school; all the little girls did, whenever they felt like it.  Miss Benton, the teacher, had a shelf for them in the entry-way where the wraps were hung, and the dolls sat on it and waited patiently all through lessons.  At recess time or nooning each little mother snatched her own child and began to play.  As soon as it grew warm enough to play outdoors without just racing around every minute to keep from freezing to death, the dolls and their mothers went out to a great pile of rocks at one end of the bare, stony field which was the playground.