s, I did."

"What made you think of such a thing?"

"I don't know."

"I shouldn't think you would know. I never heard of such doings in my
life!"

After they got home not much was said to young Lucretia; the aunts were
still too much bewildered for many words. Lucretia was bidden to light
her candle and go to bed, and then came a new grief, which was the last
drop in the bucket for her. They confiscated her rag doll, and put it
away in the parlor with the clove apple, the nautilus shell, and the
gift-book. Then the little girl's heart failed her, remorse for she
hardly knew what, terror, and the loss of the sole comfort that had come
to her on this pitiful Christmas Eve were too much.

"Oh," she wailed, "my rag baby! my rag baby! I--want my--rag baby. Oh!
oh! oh! I want her, I want her."

Scolding had no effect. Young Lucretia sobbed out her complaint all the
way up-stairs, and her aunts could distinguish the pitiful little wail
of, "my rag baby, I want my rag baby," after she was in her chamber.

The two women looked at each other. They had sat uneasily down by the
sitting-room fire.

"I must say that I think you're rather hard on her, Lucretia," said
Maria, finally.

"I don't know as I've been any harder on her than you have," returned
Lucretia. "I shouldn't have said to take away that rag baby if I'd said
just what I thought."

"I think you'd better take it up to her, then, and stop that crying,"
said Maria.

Lucretia hastened into the north parlor without another word. She
carried the rag baby up-stairs to young Lucretia; then she came down to
the pantry and got a seed-cake for her. "I thought the child had better
have a little bite of something; she didn't eat scarcely a mite of
supper," she explained to Maria. She had given young Lucretia's head a
hard pat when she bestowed the seed-cake, and bade her eat it and go
right to sleep. The little girl hugged her rag baby and ate her cooky in
bliss.

The aunts sat a while longer by the sitting-room fire. Just before they
left it for the night Lucretia looked hesitatingly at Maria, and said,
"I s'pose you have noticed that wax doll down to White's store, 'ain't
you?"

"That big wax one with the pink dress?" asked Maria, faintly and
consciously.

"Yes. There was a doll's bedstead there, too. I don't know as you
noticed."

"Yes, I think I did, now you speak of it. I noticed it the day I went in
for the calico. There was a doll baby's carriage there, t