pauper child sent to die in a
hospital, because Christian charity makes every man and woman father and
mother to these little ones.

All day the dolls went about in the busy Doctor's pocket, and I think
the violets did them good, for the soft perfume clung to them long
afterward like the memory of a lovely life, as short and sweet as that
of the flowers.

In the evening they were folded up in a fresh paper and re-directed
carefully. The Doctor wrote a little note telling why he had kept them,
and was just about to put on some stamps when a friend came in who was
going to Boston in the morning.

"Anything to take along, Fred?" asked the newcomer.

"This parcel, if you will. I have a feeling that I'd rather not have it
knock about in a mail-bag," and the Doctor told him why.

It was pleasant to see how carefully the traveller put away the parcel
after that, and to hear him say that he was going through Boston to the
mountains for his holiday, and would deliver it in Portland to Miss Plum
herself.

"Now there is some chance of our getting there," said Flora, as they set
off next day in a new Russia leather bag.

On the way they overheard a long chat between some New York and Boston
ladies which impressed them very much. Flora liked to hear the
fashionable gossip about clothes and people and art and theatres, but
Dora preferred the learned conversation of the young Boston ladies, who
seemed to know a little of everything, or think they did.

"I hope Mamma will give me an entirely new wardrobe when I get home; and
we will have dolls' weddings and balls, and a play, and be as fine and
fashionable as those ladies down there," said Flora, after listening a
while.

"You have got your head full of dressy ideas and high life, sister. I
don't care for such things, but mean to cultivate my mind as fast as I
can. That girl says she is in college, and named over more studies than
I can count. I do wish we were to stop and see a little of the refined
society of Boston," answered Dora, primly.

"Pooh!" said Flo, "don't you try to be intellectual, for you are only a
wooden-headed doll. I mean to be a real Westerner, and just enjoy myself
as I please, without caring what other folks do or think. Boston is no
better than the rest of the world, I guess."

Groans from every article in the bag greeted this disrespectful speech,
and an avalanche of Boston papers fell upon the audacious doll. But Flo
was undaunted, and shouted fr