t would be, letting a boy have hold of it."

Sarah Jane was not much comforted. She crept forlornly along towards
home. Joe West's house was on the way. There was a field south of it. As
she came to this field she saw Joe out there with the bossy. This bossy,
which was tethered to an old apple-tree, was cream-colored, with a white
star on her forehead and a neck and head like a deer. She stood
knee-deep in the daisies and clover, and looked like a regular
picture-calf. If Sarah Jane had not been so much occupied with her own
troubles, she would have stopped to gaze with pleasure at the pretty
creature.

Joe stood at her head and appeared to be teasing her. She twitched away
from him, and lunged at him playfully with her budding horns.

"Joe! Joe!" called quaking little Sarah Jane.

Joe West gave one glance at her; his face flushed a burning red; then he
left the bossy and went with long strides across the fields towards his
home. The poor girl followed him.

"Joe! Joe!" called the little despairing voice, but he never turned his
head.

Sarah Jane got past his house; then she sat down beside the road and
wept. She did not know how Joe West, remorseful and penitent, was
peeping at her from his window. She did not know of the tragedy which
had just been enacted over there in the clover-field. The bossy calf,
who was hungry for all strange articles of food, had poked her inquiring
nose into Joe West's jacket pocket, whence a bit of French calico
emerged, had caught hold of it, and, in short, had then and there eaten
up Lily Rosalie Violet May. Joe had made an attempt to pull her by her
silken wig out of that greedy mouth, but the bossy calmly chewed on.

It was just as well that Sarah Jane did not know it at the time. She had
enough to bear--her own distress over the loss of the doll, and the
reproaches of Serena and her mother. They agreed that the loss of the
doll served her right for her disobedience, and that nothing should be
said to Joe West. They also thought the affair too trivial to fuss over.
Lily Rosalie even in her designer's eyes was not what she was to Sarah
Jane.

"If you'd minded me you wouldn't have lost it," said Serena. "I am not
going to make you another."

Sarah Jane hung her head meekly. But in the course of three months she
had another doll in a very unexpected and curious way.

One evening there was a knock on the side door, and when it was opened
there was no one there, but on the step l