d have another, so she had no cause for excitement. She looked
it over carefully, touched the spring which made its eyes roll, drew off
one of its tiny silk shoes and stockings, passed her hand over the lace
train.

"I'll keep it," said Lily; "and now you bring me the whole family."

When all her dolls, little and big--all of them had been handsome in
their day, but some of them were a little the worse for wear--were laid
on the bed, she put the new one, with curling yellow hair almost exactly
like her own, on the pillow beside her, and took up the others one by
one.

"You can throw this one away," she said at last, holding out one which
had a broken arm, and was leaking sawdust at the elbow; "I don't want
but twelve children, anyway."

When her maid went out, Lily looked at her new doll, touched its hair
and rich costume, but there was not any wonder in it for her; there had
never been a time when she had not had as pretty dolls as money could
buy; so Lily sighed and fell asleep almost immediately. Now Lily's maid
left the disgraced doll on a chair in the kitchen, and there Mary the
cook found it. It had on a pretty muslin dress and sash, and nice
embroidered underwear, just like any fashionable young lady. It was
Christmas week, and Mary had bought a doll to give to her little niece
on Christmas-day, and seeing at once what a treasure this costume would
be, she took it off, did it up as fresh as new, and made the doll she
had bought look quite like a princess in it. So the old broken-armed
doll had not a rag left of its former glory. But luck sometimes comes
even to dolls.

Three days later, early in the cold morning, a little girl stood
ankle-deep in the new-fallen snow in front of the grand house where Lily
De Koven with her twelve waxen children lived.

This little girl was Biddy O'Dolan, and Biddy O'Dolan was in luck on
this cold morning.

She had on nothing that you would call clothes; she had on _duds_. She
had no parents and no home. She had some straw in a cellar, where other
children who wore duds slept at night on other bunches of straw. She was
a rag-picker and an ash girl, and sometimes was very hungry, and
sometimes was beaten by other poor hungry wretches, who, because they
were miserable, wanted to hurt somebody--not knowing any better--and so
beat Biddy O'Dolan because there was no one to interfere. In spite of
all these things, Biddy was sometimes merry, which I think is wonderful.

[Illustr