Mary Jane: Her Book

Excerpt

THE BROKEN DOLL

Mary Jane stood on the curbstone and stared into the middle of the street. Her face was white with fright and the tears which had not as yet come were close to her big blue eyes. Her little fists were clinched and even her perky plaid hair ribbon seemed to show amazement.

And wasn't it enough to make any little girl stare? Her big, beautiful doll, the one that came at Christmas time, lay crushed and broken in the middle of the street! Its glossy brown hair matted in the dust; its dainty pink dress torn and dirty and its great brown eyes crushed to powder!

For a full minute Mary Jane stared at the wreck that had been her doll.
Then she turned and ran screaming toward the house.

Mrs. Merrill heard her and met her at the front steps.

"Mary Jane! Dear child!" she cried, "what is the matter? Tell mother what has happened!"

"My doll! My beautifulest doll!" sobbed Mary Jane, "my Marie Georgianna is all run over!"

"Surely not, surely not, Mary Jane," said her mother as she picked up the little girl and sat down, with her on her lap, on the porch steps, "dolls don't get run over."

"My doll did," said Mary Jane positively, "see?"

Mrs. Merrill looked out into the street and there, sure enough, was the wreck of the doll.

"Tell me how it happened, dear," said Mrs. Merrill and she gathered her little girl tighter in her arms as she spoke for she knew that if a doll had been run over, Mary Jane herself had not missed an accident by so very much for the doll and the little girl were always close together.

Mary Jane wiped her eyes on her mother's handkerchief, snugged cozily in the comfortable arms and told her story.

"I was going over to play with Junior like you said I could," she began (Junior was the little neighbor boy who lived across the street in the big white house), "and just as I got into the middle of the street I heard a big, big noisy 'toot-t-t-t-t' way down by Fifth Street—and you know, mother" (and here Mary Jane sat up straight) "that you always told me if an automobile was as far away as Fifth Street it was all right—so I went on across. But this automobile didn't just come; it hurried fast, oh, so very fast and by the time I was half way across the road it was so close I just turned around and ran back to the curbstone and I was in such a hurry I guess I must have dropped my Marie Georgianna!"

"And the automobile ran over her, poor dolly," finished mother, with a thrill of fear as she realized Mary Jane's narrow escape. Then she wiped off the teary blue eyes and smilingly said, "Listen, Mary Jane, and I'll tell you a secret."

"A secret about a doll?" asked Mary Jane eagerly.

"A secret about a doll," replied mother. "Marie Georgianna has a twin."

"Not a really truly twin?" demanded Mary Jane and she sat up straight and opened her eyes wide. "A really, truly, for surely enough twin?"

"Yes, she has," said mother nodding her head emphatically, "a really, truly, for surely enough twin—I saw her down at the store only yesterday and I think we'll have to go down town and bring her home, don't you think so?"

"But how'll we go so early?" asked Mary Jane, for she knew that mother always liked to do her morning work before they went on errands....