THE STORY OF A SAWDUST DOLL


[Illustration: The Sawdust Doll Got Out of Dorothy’s Bed

                              _Frontispiece--(Page 79)_]




  _MAKE BELIEVE STORIES_
  (Trademark Registered)


  THE STORY OF A
  SAWDUST
  DOLL

  BY

  LAURA LEE HOPE

  AUTHOR OF “THE STORY OF A LAMB ON WHEELS,” “THE
  STORY OF A CALICO CLOWN,” “THE BOBBSEY TWINS
  SERIES,” “THE BUNNY BROWN SERIES,” “THE
  SIX LITTLE BUNKERS SERIES,” ETC.

  ILLUSTRATED BY
  HARRY L. SMITH

  NEW YORK
  GROSSET & DUNLAP
  PUBLISHERS




  COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
  GROSSET & DUNLAP




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                     PAGE

     I. FUN IN TOY TOWN          1

    II. JUST WAITING            15

   III. THE LITTLE GIRL         27

    IV. IN AN AUTOMOBILE        37

     V. THE BIRTHDAY PARTY      49

    VI. IN THE DOG HOUSE        62

   VII. IN THE RAG-BAG          73

  VIII. IN THE JUNK SHOP        87

    IX. A HAPPY VISIT           97

     X. “OH, DEAR ME!”         110




THE STORY OF A SAWDUST DOLL




CHAPTER I

FUN IN TOY TOWN


Toy Town was not a little city off by itself on the shore of some
winding river. Nor was Toy Town a place up near the North Pole, where
Santa Claus has his workshops for making presents. The Toy Town I am
going to tell you about was in a big store. To get to it you went up
in an elevator, and, once you were there, you saw the most wonderful
and beautiful things you ever dreamed of! There were all sorts of toys,
drums that beat a rub-a-dub-dub all by themselves, funny clowns who
banged tinkly brass things together when you pushed a spring near their
neckties, and many other fascinating playthings.

Toy Town was a wonderful place!

One night, when the elevators had stopped sliding up and down, and when
the doors of the big store were closed, and when the lights had been
turned low, there was a rattling, a clattering, a rustling and bustling
and a whispering and talking on the shelves and counters of Toy Town.

“Has everybody gone?” asked a Sawdust Doll, as she sat stiffly up near
a Bold Tin Soldier, whose sword shone faintly in the light of one
little electric lamp. The Sawdust Doll was stiff because she had been
lying on her back all day.

“Yes, I think every one has gone,” answered a White Rocking Horse,
as he moved slowly to and fro on the floor, just under the toy
counter. He was too large to be put up on the shelf. Besides, he might
accidentally have kicked a hole in the drum. Mind you! I’m not saying
he would have done it on purpose, but he might have done it by accident.

“I don’t see any one,” said the Bold Tin Soldier, and he waved his
sword over his head.

“Isn’t he just wonderful!” whispered the Candy Rabbit to the Calico
Clown. “I wish I were as brave as he! If any one has stayed behind in
Toy Town to try to watch what we do after store hours, I’m sure they’ll
be glad enough to run away when they see the sword of the Tin Soldier.”

“Yes, he is a bold chap,” answered the Calico Clown, and he felt the
least bit jealous because the Candy Rabbit thought the Tin Soldier
chap was so fine. “I always wanted to be a soldier,” went on the Calico
Clown, “but when I was small I began playing tricks and making jokes,
so--look what I am!” and he held out his two long arms, on the end of
each of which was a round, shiny piece of brass. These brasses were
called “cymbals,” and they tinkled together with a clanging sound. “No
use for me to wish to be a soldier,” sighed the Calico Clown. “My life
is a joke!”

“I like you best as you are. You’re real jolly, I think,” chattered
a Monkey on a Stick, as he climbed up and then climbed down again.
“We must have some fun in this world, as well as being guarded by Tin
Soldiers.”

“That is very true,” remarked a Lamb on Wheels, as she rolled over
toward the White Rocking Horse. “I love jolly times. That’s why I’m
always so glad when night comes and we toys may do as we please.”

“We may, if there is no one to watch us,” said the Sawdust Doll, as she
got up on her feet, rather stiffly, for, as I have said, she had been
lying on her back all day, and you know how tiresome that is. “But we
must be very careful not to start our fun until every one is away,”
went on the Sawdust Doll.

“I’ll take a look,” offered the Bold Tin Soldier.

“I’ll come with you,” said the Calico Clown. “If we find that any boys
or girls, or their fathers or mothers, have hidden themselves away in
our Toy Town, to spy on us at our play, I’ll bang my cymbals together.”

“And I’ll shout and wave my sword,” went on the Tin Soldier.

“Surely that ought to scare them away,” bleated the Lamb on Wheels.

“If it doesn’t, I’ll just gallop toward them,” said the White Rocking
Horse. “That will make them run!”

So the Bold Tin Soldier and the Calico Clown climbed down off the toy
counter and walked slowly, and a little stiffly, over the floor toward
the elevators. The one light shone dimly, and by its rays they could
see that no one was in the store--not even the watchman. He was down
on the first floor, near the perfumery counter. He loved the smell of
perfumery, did that watchman.

“No one is here!” said the Bold Tin Soldier, as he came marching back
with the Calico Clown.

“Not a soul to watch us? That’s fine!” shouted the Monkey on a Stick.
“Now I’m going to have some fun!” and he began to run up and down so
quickly that the Sawdust Doll cried:

“Oh, please, Monkey! Not so fast, if you please! You make me dizzy!”

“All right! I’ll go more slowly,” kindly offered the Monkey. “But when
you’ve had to keep still all day, because so many boys and girls are
watching you, when they’re not picking you up and punching you to see
what you’re made of--I say when you’ve been that way all day, you want
to go fast when you get the chance.”

“I suppose so,” agreed the White Rocking Horse. “I feel like kicking my
heels, too.”

“Well, just wait a moment, if you please,” put in the Bold Tin Soldier.
“I want to march some of my men out into the middle of the floor and
have a little parade. After I get them past you, why, then you may kick
up your heels as much as you please.”

“All right,” whinnied the White Horse. “March away! I’m glad to do a
favor.”

The Bold Tin Soldier nimbly jumped up on the counter, where he had been
standing all day in a box with his tin soldier men. He waved his sword
over his head until it flashed in the gleam of the one light like a
star on a frosty night, and the Sawdust Doll covered her eyes with her
hand, because it was so shiny.

“Attention, soldiers!” cried the tin captain.

Every one of the tin soldiers in the box sprang up straight and stiff
and held his gun to his shoulder.

“Forward--march!” cried the captain, again waving his sword.

The tin soldiers stepped into line behind him, and, one after another,
they followed him as he jumped off the counter to the floor. Past the
White Rocking Horse they marched, each one as brave as his captain.

“Now you may kick your heels as high as you please, Mr. White Rocking
Horse,” called the captain. “We are safely out of your reach.”

“All right!” came the answer. “Here I go!” And with that the toy horse,
which was built to make some boy happy, began rocking to and fro.

“If any one wants a ride on my back, now’s his chance!” called the
White Rocking Horse.

“I do!” cried the Sawdust Doll, and with the help of the Calico Clown
she got down off the counter and climbed up and sat on the saddle.

And, for a few moments, all that could be heard in Toy Town was the
faint sound of the marching feet of the tin soldiers, the rumble of the
Rocking Horse and the tinkle of the Calico Clown’s cymbals.

It was close to midnight now--the time when all toys are allowed to do
as they please, provided no one sees them. No one must ever look at,
or watch, the toys at their play. In fact, no one has ever seen them
having fun after dark in the big stores.

And the reason for that is this:

When the toys were given the power of coming to life, of talking,
moving about, having fun, and behaving just as they would if they were
real folk--when they were given this power there was just one thing
they were told, and that was:

“No one must ever see you moving about!”

“Oh, no! Of course not!” said all the toys.

And so, from the very beginning, no one has ever seen the toys at play.
Just the very moment the eyes of a boy or a girl, or a daddy or a
mother, or even an uncle or an aunt, lights on one of the toys, that
toy just becomes as still as anything.

If, by some chance, when you weren’t looking a Sawdust Doll should
start to dance with a Calico Clown, and you should turn your eyes
toward them, they would stop at once, and you’d never know but what
they had been motionless all their lives.

Because of this no one has ever seen the toys at play, and the only
reason I am allowed to tell you what they did is because I promised not
to look. They told me about it afterward--just how it all happened--and
that’s why I may put it in a book. But as for looking myself at the
toys as they play, or letting any one else look--never! I wouldn’t
dream of it!

“Am I going too fast for you?” politely asked the White Rocking Horse
of the Sawdust Doll, as he rode her on his back.

“Oh, not at all,” she answered. “I like it.”

“That’s good,” he replied. “Oh, look at the Monkey, will you?” he
called.

“Isn’t he funny?” said the Sawdust Doll. “Do you know, he’ll make some
little boy or girl laugh, I’m sure of it!”

“Yes, he’ll be a nice Christmas toy for some one,” answered the Horse.

“But I would like to stay here among my toy friends a little longer,”
said the Sawdust Doll.

“Yes, it is nice here,” said the Calico Clown, as he softly banged his
cymbals. “Say, let’s have a little party!” he went on. “It is getting
close to Christmas now. Some of us are sure to be bought and taken
away. Some of us may never see the others again. We ought to celebrate
in some way.”

“That’s what I say!” came from the Candy Rabbit. “Of course, I’m not
so likely to go until near Easter time. But you never can tell. Let’s
have a party, I say,” and the Candy Rabbit wiggled his ears.

“A good idea!” bleated the Lamb on Wheels. “What shall we do?”

“We could play tag!” said the Monkey on a Stick.

“You can beat us all at that,” remarked the Sawdust Doll. “You jump
around so I never can tag you.”

“I’ll go slowly this time,” promised the Monkey. “Come on--let’s have a
game of tag!”

“Or hide-and-go-seek!” said the Calico Clown. “I know a dandy place to
hide,” he whispered to the Candy Rabbit. “There’s a hole in the counter
near the Jack-in-the-Box, and he won’t tell where we are.”

“Is there room for me?” asked the Candy Rabbit.

“Plenty,” answered the Calico Clown. “Come on!”

The Sawdust Doll was just getting off the White Rocking Horse to join
in the fun when, all at once, the Candy Rabbit cried:

“Oh, some one is coming! Some one is coming! Quiet, everybody! Don’t
move!”

And as each and every toy stiffened out, to look as unlifelike as
possible, a scratching, squeaking noise was heard all through Toy Town.




CHAPTER II

JUST WAITING


“Dear me! What is it? What can it be?” whispered the Sawdust Doll to
the White Rocking Horse.

“Hush! Quiet! Don’t say a word,” the Horse whispered back. “If it’s
the watchman, or any people coming back after something they have
forgotten, they must never know that we can move about and have fun
when they aren’t looking.”

“Oh, no! Of course not!” agreed the Sawdust Doll, in a whisper, and
then she sat very quietly on the back of the Rocking Horse, for she had
no chance, so suddenly had the alarming noise sounded, to get back to
her place on the toy counter.

Pitter and patter, squeak and bang, rattle and rustle went the noise
that had so frightened all the toy friends who were just getting ready
for a party.

“What is it?” asked the Lamb on Wheels.

“Is it the watchman?” the Monkey on a Stick wanted to know. He had
crouched down near a toy fire engine, and he was wishing he might
shower some water on a stuffed elephant near by.

“Or is it some of the shoppers who have forgotten some toy they bought
during the day?” asked the Candy Rabbit.

And then, all of a sudden, the Sawdust Doll, looking down at the floor,
cried out:

“Oh, it’s a rat! It’s a great big rat! Oh! Oh-e-e-e-e-e!” and she
squealed like the little Green Pig on the top shelf, only, as he was
asleep just then, he didn’t do any squealing himself.

“Gracious! I hope he doesn’t nibble off one of my ears,” said the Candy
Rabbit, and he tried to hide behind the Calico Clown, who had managed
to get back to his place on the counter.

“Forward, march! Take aim! Charge bayonets,” a voice suddenly called
through the dim darkness of the toy store.

“Oh, it’s the Bold Tin Soldier!” cried the Sawdust Doll. “Oh, protect
us! Save us from the rat!” she begged.

“Of course I will!” the Tin Soldier answered. “Where is he? Let me and
my men get at him!”

“Here he is! Right over by the White Rocking Horse!” answered the
Sawdust Doll.

“Squeak! Squeak!” went the rat. “What’s all the trouble here? Can’t a
fellow look for something to eat without having such a fuss made over
it? What’s the matter?”

“Matter enough!” exclaimed the Bold Tin Soldier, marching up with his
tin men. “It’s true you are not a boy or a girl or a grown person; so
we aren’t afraid to have you see us in motion. But you must get out of
here!”

“What for?” asked the rat, and he looked hungrily at the ears of the
Candy Rabbit. The rat was very fond of sweet things. “Why must I run
away?” he asked.

“Because you don’t belong here,” answered the Tin Soldier. “Your place
is down in the cellar near the coal bin and the furnace. This is the
toy department. There is nothing to eat here, and we are going to have
a party.”

“How can you have a party without something to eat?” asked the rat,
with a cunning look, for these creatures are very sly.

“It isn’t going to be that kind of party at all,” said the Sawdust
Doll. She felt rather safe up on the back of the White Rocking Horse.
“We’re just going to play tag, and do things like that,” she went on.

“And not going to have anything to eat!” exclaimed the rat. “Pooh! I
don’t call that any kind of party at all! I’m hungry!”

“Then you’d better run away!” said the Bold Tin Soldier, and he flashed
his sword so daringly, and his soldiers pointed their tin guns and
bayonets so sharply at the rat that, after showing his teeth once or
twice, he switched his tail and ran back to the hole by which he had
gnawed his way into Toy Town.

“Well, I’m glad he’s gone,” said the Sawdust Doll.

“So am I,” said the Candy Rabbit. “I am sure he wanted to see how I
tasted.”

“Well, I don’t know that you can blame him,” remarked the Calico Clown.
“You surely are the sweetest thing here! Ha! Ha! Here we are again,
boys and girls!” he cried.

“Oh, what a joke!” exclaimed the Sawdust Doll.

“That’s it! We must have fun!” laughed the Calico Clown. “Here is
another joke! What kind of toes never wear any shoes?” he asked.

“The idea!” said the Sawdust Doll. “There aren’t any kinds of toes but
what have shoes to cover them. My toes are covered with kid shoes, and
the Tin Soldier’s toes are covered with tin shoes, and the Monkey’s
toes are covered with plush, and----”

“I mean pota-toes!” laughed the Calico Clown. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Pota-toes
never wear shoes!” and he doubled up in the middle, because he thought
his joke was so funny.

“Well, that isn’t such a bad one,” said the Rocking Horse. “You must
have been in a circus, Mr. Clown.”

“No, not yet, but I want to be,” was the answer. “I’m hoping some boy
will buy me and put me in a sawdust ring. That’s where I belong as a
Calico Clown. In a sawdust ring!”

And the Calico Clown banged his cymbals together and felt so jolly that
he sang a little song like this:

  “In a sawdust ring,
  In a sawdust ring,
  That’s where I belong.
  I’ll crack a joke,
  Some fun I’ll poke,
  And then I’ll song a sing.”

“What’s that? What’s that?” asked the Bold Tin Soldier. “‘Song a sing’?”

“It’s just the same as sing a song only I do it backwards by standing
on my head,” answered the Calico Clown.

“Don’t pay too much attention to him,” whispered the Sawdust Doll.
“He’s cutting up to-night.”

“I should say he was!” exclaimed the Tin Soldier. “Song a sing! The
idea! Next we know he’ll be tuning a whistle instead of whistling a
tune, and they aren’t the same thing at all--even backwards.”

“Indeed not!” agreed the Sawdust Doll. “But I’m so glad you drove that
rat away,” she added, and she looked kindly at the Bold Tin Soldier.
“We never could have had any fun while he was here.”

Then the good times began. They played tag and hide-and-go-seek and a
new game they made up among themselves. They called it “Jump the Jack.”

Each one had to take a turn jumping over the Jack-in-the-Box, and the
Jack would reach up and try to tag them as they leaped over his head.
If he touched any one of them, that toy had to stand on one foot and
sing a song. And they had lots of fun when the Calico Clown was touched
by the Jack-in-the-Box, for the Clown sang such a funny song, all
backwards with the words mixed up like pickles.

Of course the White Rocking Horse was too big to get up on the counter
and jump around with the Candy Rabbit and the Sawdust Doll, but he had
fun staying on the floor near the toy blackboard and watching the
chalk draw funny pictures. For not only the toys that are in the shape
of animals and persons have fun when no one is watching them, but the
others, also, like the roller skates and the velocipedes, have good
times among themselves at these midnight frolics.

And so the fun went on. The Sawdust Doll was having a lovely time,
playing on a little toy piano for the Monkey on a Stick to dance with
the Calico Clown, and the Candy Rabbit was listening to a Stuffed Duck
tell how she learned to swim in the Goldfish bowl when all at once the
Tin Soldier cried:

“Back to your shelves and counters, everybody!”

“What’s the matter? Is the rat coming again?” asked the Sawdust Doll,
as she stopped playing the toy piano.

“No, but it is getting daylight,” was the answer. “I can see the gleam
of the sun in the eastern windows. Soon the store will be open and
people will be coming in to buy--perhaps some one may buy me and my
brave men.”

“Oh, I hope not!” sighed the Sawdust Doll. “If you go away, what shall
we do if the rat comes back?”

“Maybe I can stop up his hole before I go away,” the Bold Tin Soldier
answered. “But quick, now! Everybody back on shelf or counter! Here
comes the sun!”

And as the sun rose and filled the world with light, the doors of Toy
Town opened. The clerks came in to dust the different things and set
them to rights, for it was the Christmas season and many people would
come to buy.

“I wonder if some one will buy me,” softly murmured the Sawdust Doll.

“Do you want them to?” asked the Candy Rabbit.

“Well, I suppose that is why I was put in Toy Town,” answered the Doll.
“I want to do my duty, and make some little girl happy.”

“Yes, that’s what we’re for,” laughed the jolly Calico Clown. “It’s
fun to make boys and girls happy. I only wish I could crack some of my
jokes for them, but it isn’t allowed. I know one about an ear of corn
and----”

“Hush!” whispered the Sawdust Doll. “Here comes the girl who has charge
of our counter!”

Then all the toys stopped talking among themselves and became straight
and stiff. They were waiting--just waiting for some one to come in and
buy them.




CHAPTER III

THE LITTLE GIRL


Into the store came a little girl, her mother, and a little boy. They
took their places in the elevator and were lifted up, just like a
balloon, only different, of course.

“May we stop in the toy department, Mother?” asked the little girl. “I
want to look at some dolls.”

“What for?” asked the boy.

“Because my birthday is next week, Dick,” answered the little girl,
whose name was Dorothy. “It’s my birthday, and maybe I’ll get a doll
then, or for Christmas.”

“It isn’t my birthday until after Christmas,” said Dick. “But I don’t
want a doll either of those times.”

“What do you want?” asked Mother, smiling at her two children as she
left the elevator with them. “What would you like, Richard?” she asked;
for that was Dick’s real name.

“A rocking horse,” he answered. “I’d like a big rocking horse, and then
I could make believe I was a soldier captain going to war.”

“Yes, we’ll look through the toy department,” promised the mother, and
then happy looks came over the faces of Dick and Dorothy.

On the shelves and counters where, a little while before in the
half-darkness, the Sawdust Doll, the Calico Clown, and the other toys
had had such fun, they now sat or stood, as stiff as the ramrod in the
gun of the Tin Soldier. Not one of them moved, and the White Rocking
Horse just stared straight in front of him, looking at the blackboard.

“Oh, Mother, here are the dolls!” cried Dorothy, and she pointed to a
shelf back of the counter on which the Calico Clown stood near the Bold
Tin Soldier. “See the dolls on the shelves! Oh, what pretty ones!”

“Would you like to look at the dolls?” asked the girl behind the
counter. She worked in the store, and now she lifted down the Sawdust
Doll who had, only an hour or so before, been riding on the back of the
White Rocking Horse.

“Here is a very pretty doll,” said the girl clerk, who was pretty
herself. “Her eyes open and shut.”

“And they’re brown, too, just like Dick’s!” whispered the little girl
to her mother, as she took the doll in her arms. “Oh, please may I
have her?”

“I’ll see,” answered the mother, and from the way she said this, and
because of the smile on her face and the look in her eyes, the little
girl clapped her hands. I think she knew her mother was going to get
her the doll she wanted.

For a moment the Sawdust Doll thought the little girl was going to buy
her and take her home.

“I’d just love to go with her,” thought the Sawdust Doll to herself.
“She looks like a kind, good little girl, and I’m sure she wouldn’t
leave me out in the rain all night to get soaked through. I wonder if I
shall go to her house to live?”

“Dear me!” thought the Tin Captain to himself, “I hope the Sawdust Doll
isn’t going to leave. I shall be lonesome if she goes.”

Just then there was a shout and some jolly laughter down on the floor
of the toy department.

“Oh, this is what I want! This is what I want!” cried Dorothy’s
brother, Dick. “Here’s the White Rocking Horse I want!”

And the next moment he had leaped to the saddle, and then he rocked to
and fro on the back of the white horse. The stirrups jingled and the
boy shook the reins that were fast in the wooden mouth of the horse.

“Gid-dap, White Rocking Horse!” cried the boy. “I’m a cowboy! Gid-dap!”

“I thought you were going to be a soldier captain,” said the little
girl, who had run from the doll counter when she heard her brother’s
joyous laughter.

“I’ll be a cowboy part of the time and a soldier the other part,” he
said. “And if you get a doll, Dorothy, I’ll let her ride on my horse.
Please, Mother, buy me this!” he begged.

“Not now, Dick,” was Mother’s answer. “But, if you like, you may write
Santa Claus a letter telling him you’d like this horse for Christmas.”

“Oh, I’ll do that!” cried the boy.

All day long boys and girls and fathers and mothers and uncles, aunts
and cousins came to the toy department to look, and some bought
different things which they took away with them, or had sent.

And though many dolls and clowns and candy rabbits and monkeys on
sticks were taken from the shelves or the counters, the particular
friends about whom I have told you were not sold. Once a lady came in,
and the Calico Clown was taken up and shown to her.

“No, I believe I will not buy one to-day,” said the lady.

“Oh, I’m so glad!” thought the Calico Clown to himself. “When I’m
bought I want to be bought by a boy or a girl. I can have more fun with
them.”

And so the day passed. It began to get dark and lights glowed in the
store. The stream of shoppers thinned out, and the tired girls who
waited behind the counters put away their aprons and left for home. The
porters began to sweep, and then the lights were put out one by one and
only the watchman was left in the store.

“Well, another day has gone!” said the Sawdust Doll, as she sat up and
waved her hand to the Bold Tin Soldier.

“Yes, and it came nearly being your last day with us,” remarked the
Calico Clown. “I heard what the little girl said. I believe she is
going to take you away.”

“Well, I shall be sorry to leave you, my friends, of course,” said the
Sawdust Doll. “But that little girl looked kind and good. I should not
mind if she owned me.”

“Her brother was a jolly chap, too,” said the White Rocking Horse. “He
jumped on my back and had a ride, but he was very gentle with me. If I
go to anybody, I hope I go to him.”

“Yes, you two seem to be going to have nice homes,” said the Candy
Rabbit. “I hope I find as good a place.”

“So do I,” said the Calico Clown. “Well, all I want is to make some one
jolly! That’s the life for me! Whoop de-doodle-do!” and he banged his
cymbals and shouted, as he could do, for there were no boys or girls or
grown folks there to watch.

“What was that joke you were going to tell us about an ear of corn?”
asked the Sawdust Doll. “May we not hear it now? Let’s be jolly again!
Let’s have another party! Soon we may part, perhaps never to meet
again,” and she spoke rather sadly.

“Oh, don’t say that!” begged the Tin Soldier, as he polished his sword
on his sleeve. “Don’t say that!” and he looked at the Sawdust Doll.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” laughed the Calico Clown. “Here’s a joke! How does the
lima bean succotash know when it’s time for dinner?”

“Pooh! I don’t call that a joke,” said the White Rocking Horse. “How
can succotash know when it’s time for dinner?”

“Because it hears the bell with the ear of corn!” laughed the clown.
“That’s the time I fooled you! Well, now let’s have another party!”
he went on, jumping down from his shelf and pulling the tail of the
Monkey on a Stick.

“I hope the old rat doesn’t come again,” said the Sawdust Doll.

The toys were having grand fun again, and the Bold Tin Soldier was
helping the Candy Rabbit up on the back of the White Rocking Horse for
a ride, when, all of a sudden, the door of the toy department opened
and a big man came in.

“Oh! Oh!” shrieked the Sawdust Doll, and the Calico Clown jumped behind
the Jack-in-the-Box so quickly that his cymbals rattled on the wooden
nose of the Lamb on Wheels.




CHAPTER IV

IN AN AUTOMOBILE


Just as soon, of course, as the door opened and the man came in, all
the toys at once stopped moving about, and they stopped talking and
having fun. That is because the man looked at them, and you know I told
you the moment a real, live person looked at the toys, the Doll, Clown,
Rocking Horse, and all the others became just like clothes-pins--they
couldn’t and wouldn’t move by themselves.

Slowly the big man walked into the middle of the toy department and
looked about him. His eyes glanced at the Sawdust Doll, and from her
they went to the Tin Soldier. Neither of them so much as wiggled a
fingernail.

“But I was wondering, all the while,” said the Sawdust Doll afterward,
“if that man was a burglar.”

“This is queer! When I was on the floor below I thought surely I heard
a noise up here! I thought some one was in here trying to get the
Christmas things. But that shan’t happen as long as I am watchman here!
No, indeed!”

The big man looked all around to make sure no bad persons were hiding
away to take the toys after he had left. He looked very sharply at the
Calico Clown, the man did.

“I thought surely I heard the rattle of those cymbals the clown holds,”
said the man. “But perhaps it was the wind blowing them, or a rat
running over them. There are rats in this store.”

The toys knew that very well, for they had seen a large one. And wasn’t
it queer that the man had thought he heard the cymbals jingle?

“He really did hear them, for I banged them on the Lamb’s nose when I
jumped down,” said the Calico Clown afterward.

But of course the man did not know that the toys could come to life
and have a party among themselves when no one was looking, and so he
thought the wind or a rat had made the cymbals tinkle.

And when he was gone the Sawdust Doll slowly raised her head from where
she had lain down on a shelf and said:

“Fancy now! How foolish I was to think he was a robber! He is the good,
kind watchman of this store.”

“But of course we can’t allow him to see us moving about, or hear us
talk, any more than we can let the girls and boys,” said the Calico
Clown, and he made such a funny face that the White Rocking Horse swung
to and fro in laughter.

“Well, now that he’s gone, let’s have some more fun,” cried the Candy
Rabbit. “Go on with the party.”

“That’s what I say!” chattered the Monkey on a Stick, as he quickly
climbed up and down, so rapidly that the Sawdust Doll cried:

“Oh, don’t! You make me dizzy!”

“Yes, behave yourself,” said the Bold Tin Soldier. “We can’t all be
as lively as you. Now, if you like, I’ll march out my men and we will
parade for you. How will that do?”

“Oh, fine!” exclaimed the Sawdust Doll. “I love parades! Don’t you?”
she asked the Calico Clown.

“Yes, they’re very nice,” he answered. “And when the drum goes ‘Boom!
Boom!’ I feel like jumping up and down and banging my cymbals.”

“Well, you may do that,” said the captain of the Tin Soldiers. “We
should all be as jolly as we can, for there is no telling now, from day
to day, with Christmas coming on, when one of us may be taken away.”

The Sawdust Doll thought of the little girl who had wanted her so much,
and she thought of what the mother had said:

“Put that brown-eyed doll away for me. I shall come in again.”

“I wonder if she will really buy me for her little girl,” thought the
Sawdust Doll.

And the White Rocking Horse remembered the boy who had jumped on his
back and had taken a ride there in the store.

“I should like him for a master,” thought the White Rocking Horse.

“Well, now for the parade!” called the Bold Tin Soldier smartly. “Fall
in, my men!”

“Fall in! Ha! Ha! Does he want them to fall into the Goldfish tank?”
laughed the Calico Clown.

“Hush! Be quiet!” begged the Sawdust Doll. “When a captain tells his
soldiers to ‘fall in’ he means for them to stand in a straight line so
they may march.”

And that is just what the Tin Soldiers did. They stood in line behind
their captain, who drew his shining tin sword, and then they marched in
and out among the tables, counters and shelves of the toy department.

They right-wheeled and left-wheeled and halted and went on
the double-quick and then they all stood up and fired their
guns--make-believe, of course, for the guns were only of tin, and had
no powder in them, not even talcum powder.

“But it’s lots of fun to make believe!” said the Sawdust Doll, when the
parade had ended.

“Yes, it certainly is!” said the Calico Clown. “And, speaking of fun,
reminds me of a joke. What part of a doll’s house is hot and cold at
the same time?”

“Ho! Such a thing can’t be!” exclaimed the White Rocking Horse.
“Nothing can be hot and cold at the same time.”

“Yes, it can!” said the Calico Clown. “It’s the front door of the
doll’s house. The outside part of the door is cold, and the inside
part, nearest the fire, is hot. Ha, Ha!” and he rattled his cymbals
like anything.

And so the make-believe party of the toys went on in the night. It was
make-believe only to such persons as you and me and the watchman.
To the toys the party was real enough, for they could talk among
themselves, and move and jump about. But if any one had looked at them,
even a little baby, the toys would have been as still and quiet as a
hairpin. That’s the funny part of it.

The Sawdust Doll was just having a little dance with the Calico Clown,
and the Monkey on a Stick was asking the White Rocking Horse to give
him a ride around the floor when, all of a sudden, the Lamb on Wheels
came rolling back from where she had gone to look out of a window.

“The sun is coming up! The sun is coming up!” cried the Lamb. “Back to
your places, every one of you. It will soon be daylight and the people
will begin coming in.”

And, surely enough, a little while after that, when all the toys
were back in their places, the store opened, the clerks took their
stand behind counters and in front of shelves, and once more the busy
shopping day began.

“I wonder if anything will happen to me to-day,” thought the Sawdust
Doll as she sat on her shelf, with other dolls and toys around her. “I
wonder if I shall ever have any adventures. I wonder----”

And just then she was surprised to see, coming toward the doll counter,
the same lady who, the day before, had been in with the little girl
Dorothy and the boy Dick.

“Where is that pretty doll I looked at yesterday?” asked the lady of
the girl clerk. “I mean the one with the brown eyes?”

“This is it, Madam,” was the answer. “I put it aside for you,” and the
girl lifted down the Sawdust Doll. To look at her you never would have
thought that, a few hours before, she had been dancing around with the
Calico Clown.

“Yes, that is the doll I want for my little girl,” said the lady. “It
is one of the most beautiful I have seen in the store. Her brown eyes
are so very pretty. I’ll take her.”

And then began some adventures for the Sawdust Doll. She was dusted
off with a soft brush, and it tickled her face so that she wanted to
sneeze, but she knew she would not dare do that with all the people
around. Then the clerk wrapped some soft paper around her, and more
paper on the outside of that and tied it with a string.

“Gracious! I hope I don’t smother!” thought the Sawdust Doll.

She wished she might have a chance to say good-bye to the White Rocking
Horse, and to the Candy Rabbit, the Monkey on a Stick, the Bold Tin
Soldier, the Lamb on Wheels, and the Calico Clown.

But of course this could not be done while all the people were looking
on. But the Tin Soldier, the Calico Clown, and others were thinking to
themselves rather sad thoughts.

“There goes our Sawdust Doll!” thought the Clown. “I suppose I’ll never
see her again.”

“And I’ll never have another chance to drive a bad rat away from her
with my tin sword,” thought the Tin Soldier.

“She’ll never ride on my back again,” mused the White Rocking Horse.

“Never again will she tell me how sweet I am,” sighed the Candy Rabbit.

“She used to like to watch me go up and down on my stick,” whispered
the Monkey to himself; “that is, when I didn’t go too fast.”

“She used to feel my soft wool,” was what the Lamb on Wheels thought to
herself.

But the lady who had bought the Sawdust Doll knew nothing of this. She
took the package the clerk gave her, and, with it in her arms, got into
her automobile.

“We’ll go home now,” said the lady to the man who sat at the
steering-wheel. “I have the doll for Dorothy, so we’ll go home.”

And, a moment later, the Sawdust Doll was rolling smoothly over the
streets on her way to have new adventures. But she could not help
feeling sad when she thought of the toys she had left behind in the
store.




CHAPTER V

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY


The Sawdust Doll could not see, of course, all the things that happened
on her automobile ride, for she was wrapped in paper from the store.
But she could feel the big machine gliding along on its rubber-tired
wheels, and she knew she was having a ride.

“It may be nicer than a ride on the back of the White Rocking Horse,”
thought the Sawdust Doll, “but it isn’t so much fun, cooped up here as
I am. I wish we’d get where we’re going.”

And, soon enough, she had her wish. Through the different streets
rolled the automobile, and soon it came to a stop near a pretty house
in front of which was a lawn. The lawn was green in summer, but now, as
it was near Christmas, there was white snow on the grass.

“You may put the auto up now,” said the lady to the driver. “I shall
not be going out again to-day. I must get ready for Dorothy’s birthday
party.”

And then the Sawdust Doll was carried into the house. The lady hurried
up the stairs, holding the package under her fur coat.

“Is that you, Mother?” called Dorothy from the playroom.

“Yes,” was the answer. “Stay there! I’ll be with you in a moment. Is
Dick there?”

“Yes, I’m here!” Dick answered. “I’m making believe a chair is a
rocking horse. Did you bring me a rocking horse, Mother?” he asked,
and he came to the door of the playroom.

“It isn’t Christmas yet,” Mother answered, with a laugh. “Here,
Martha,” she quickly said to the maid. “Take this doll. It’s for
Dorothy’s birthday to-morrow. Hide it away on top of a closet shelf
where Dorothy’ll not see it.”

The doll was laid away on a shelf in a dark closet. That is, it was
dark for a time, but, after a while, the Sawdust Doll began to see
things faintly, just as she used to look at things on the shelves and
counters of the toy store.

“Hello! Who’s there?” suddenly asked a voice of the Sawdust Doll, and
she knew, right away, that it was a toy, like herself, speaking. But
all she could dimly see was a small, square box in one corner of the
top clothes’-press shelf.

“Hello!” said a voice again.

“Hello!” answered the Sawdust Doll politely. “But I can’t see any one,”
she added.

“And no wonder! My spring is broken, and I can’t put my head out to
see you, either,” the voice went on. “But I can look at you through a
crack.”

“A crack in what?” asked the Sawdust Doll.

“A crack in my box,” was the reply.

“Well, go on,” said the Sawdust Doll, after a moment of silence.

“I’m Jack-in-the-Box,” the voice continued. “I used to live in a toy
store, and I was bought last Christmas for the boy who lives in this
house. But after he had played with me awhile, watching me jump out of
my box every time the lid was lifted, my spring broke. I couldn’t jump
any more then, and the boy grew tired of me. So I was put away on this
shelf. Goodness, how lonesome I’ve been! I’m glad you came to keep me
company. How long are you going to stay?”

“I don’t know,” answered the Sawdust Doll.

“I hope your spring isn’t broken, and that you are not put here because
you aren’t of any more use as a toy,” said Jack-in-the-Box.

“No, I haven’t any springs,” answered the Doll. “I’m full of sawdust.”

“That’s better than having a spring inside you,” said Jack. “You can’t
break sawdust.”

“No, but you can spill it,” the Doll went on. “And that’s what I’m
always afraid of, that some day there’ll be an accident and all my
sawdust will run out.”

“Oh, let us hope not!” exclaimed Jack. “But, really, I’m glad you have
come. I was dreadfully lonesome here! Tell me about yourself. Tell me
about your adventures.”

“I haven’t had many yet,” the Sawdust Doll replied. “We used to have
fun playing party in the store after all the real folks were gone. But
I’d like to hear about you. Having your spring broken must be a very
wonderful adventure indeed.”

“Yes, it’s wonderful, all right,” sighed Jack. “But it isn’t much fun.
If my spring were not broken I could look out now from the top of
my box and see you and talk to you much better. As it is, I have to
whisper through the crack.”

“It isn’t much fun talking through a crack,” agreed the Sawdust Doll.
“But tell me about your spring.”

So Jack told how one day the boy pushed him into the box too hard, and
slammed the cover down so quickly that there was a snip and a snap,
and poor Jack’s spring broke. Never after that could he jump out of his
box with a squeak whenever the lid was lifted.

“And now I want to hear about you,” said Jack. So the Sawdust Doll told
about her friends in the store, and how the Bold Tin Soldier had driven
the rat back to his hole.

For some little time the Jack-in-the-Box and the Sawdust Doll remained
on the closet shelf, talking together in the make-believe language of
toys--a language no real persons ever hear, any more than they can see
the toys at play.

Then, the next day, the closet door suddenly opened, and a flood of
light came in.

“Ha! I think they’ve come for you,” whispered Jack.

“Maybe it’s for you,” the Doll answered.

“Oh, no, my days are over,” was the Jack’s reply. “Nobody wants to play
with a broken toy. I’ll stay here a long time, I suppose. But your
adventures are just beginning.”

And that is just what happened. The Sawdust Doll was lifted down off
the shelf, and a beautiful dress was put on her. It was made of silk,
and was the color of a rose.

“You are as nice a doll as any little girl could wish,” said Martha,
the maid, as she tied a blue sash on the Sawdust Doll.

There was a looking-glass in the room where the maid was dressing the
toy for the birthday party, and the Sawdust Doll had a look at herself
in the mirror.

“My, how nice I look,” thought the doll. “This is much nicer than
wearing nothing but a bit of cheese cloth, as I did in the store. I
won’t catch cold now.”

The rose silk dress was fastened on the doll, and then Mother came to
get the toy.

“It is almost time for Dorothy’s party,” said Mother. “I hope she will
like her doll. I’ll take it down.”

Down the stairs the Sawdust Doll was carried, and a moment later, she
found herself in a room that was filled with little girls and boys. The
girls all wore pretty dresses and the boys had their hair combed, so
the Sawdust Doll began to think it was a party. And when she heard the
guests say to Dorothy that they wished her “many happy returns,” the
Sawdust Doll knew it was a birthday party.

“Here you are, little daughter!” said Mother to Dorothy. “Here is a
present for you,” and the Sawdust Doll was handed to the little girl.

Dorothy’s eyes shone in delight, and she danced up and down as she
hugged the toy close in her arms.

“Oh, she’s the very doll I wanted!” cried Dorothy. “It’s the same one I
saw in the store! Look, Dick!” she called to her brother, showing him
her new pet. “Don’t you remember? This doll was in the store where you
rode the White Rocking Horse!”

“Yes, and I wish I had the Rocking Horse now!” exclaimed Dick. “But
dolls are all right for girls, and I’m glad you have a new one,
Dorothy,” he added, feeling he had not been very polite. “She is
pretty.”

“Yes, my doll is lovely!” said Dorothy.

“Indeed she is!” cried all the other girls. And though each one of them
had a doll, none was any prettier or more beautifully dressed than the
Sawdust Doll.

[Illustration: Carlo Runs Away With the Sawdust Doll

                                          _Page 63_]

Then the party fun began. The boys and girls played games and danced
to music. Some of the girls even danced with the Sawdust Doll, and I
think it was very good of Dorothy to let them play with her beautiful
new doll. But they were very careful.

“I like birthday parties,” thought the Sawdust Doll. “I wish the Bold
Tin Soldier and the Calico Clown were here to enjoy this one.”

After the children had played games they had good things to eat, for
that is one of the best things at a party. And while the children ate
cake and ice cream the Sawdust Doll was laid aside. She found herself
lying on a table near a big pin-cushion that was tied with a yellow
ribbon.

“I hope none of the pins or needles come out and stick me,” thought the
Doll, as she looked at them. “If I get a hole in me all my sawdust
will run out, and that would be dreadful.”

Dorothy’s new toy, lying on a table near the pin-cushion in a side
room, could hear the joyous shouts and laughter of the children at
the birthday party. She could hear the rattle of spoons and of the
ice-cream dishes.

All of a sudden, when it was very still and quiet in the room where the
Sawdust Doll was lying, there came a growling noise.

“Gracious me!” thought the Sawdust Doll, “I wonder if that is Buster
the Bear whom Jack was telling me about. I wonder!”

She started to rise and look around, but she was afraid to do this for
fear some prying boy or girl might be looking. And the toys never dare
move if any one looks at them.

Then, after the growl, there came a bark--a loud bark.

“That can’t be a bear!” thought the Sawdust Doll. “Bears don’t
bark--they growl. But I remember there was a Fuzzy Dog in Toy Town. He
used to growl and wag his tail when he was wound up. I wonder if the
Fuzzy Dog could be here? I wish I dared look.”

And then something dreadful happened. At least it was dreadful to the
Sawdust Doll. For a shaggy dog, one she knew was real and not a toy,
rushed up to her, growling and barking. And the next moment the Sawdust
Doll was caught up in the dog’s mouth, dragged from the table and
carried away!




CHAPTER VI

IN THE DOG HOUSE


Carlo, the shaggy dog, who lived in the same house with Dorothy and
Dick, was not a bad dog. But he liked to find new things to pick up
in his teeth, shake, and then carry off. Sometimes he hid the things
he carried off in this way, and they were not found for a long time
afterward. Often he would take the ball Dick played with and run off
with that. But when Dick saw Carlo doing this he chased the dog and got
back the ball.

However, this time no one saw Carlo taking away the Sawdust Doll. The
dog had watched his chance, and when he saw Dorothy and the other
girls and boys in the dining-room, eating cake and ice cream, Carlo
just thought to himself:

“Now I can run in and grab something! I saw Dorothy put something up on
the table. Maybe it’s a ball that I can have fun with!”

So Carlo hurried into the room where he had seen Dorothy lay something
down, and, as the table was not very high, Carlo jumped right up on it.

“Oh, here’s something fine for me to carry away!” said the dog to
himself, and then he picked up the Sawdust Doll.

Out of the room, down the hall and past the dining-room where the
children were having such jolly times ran Carlo with the Sawdust Doll
in his mouth. He did not hurt her, for he did not really bite her. He
only carried her as a mother cat carries her kittens by the backs of
their necks. Besides, being stuffed with sawdust as she was, the Doll
could not feel pain. Of course her feelings were hurt a little when the
dog grabbed her up so suddenly, but she seemed to know she would not
really be harmed.

“There you are!” said Carlo, in dog language, as he dropped the Sawdust
Doll down in the straw of his kennel, or house, at the end of the yard.
“There you are! No one will find you here!”

The Sawdust Doll did not answer the dog, even though she may have known
what he said. Pet animals and toy pets do not speak the same sort of
talk, at least to one another. And pet animals can move about and bark
or mew whether any real folks are looking at them or not. Toy dolls,
rocking horses, and monkeys are not like that. They never move, or do
anything if you watch them.

Carlo scuttled around in the straw until he had covered the Sawdust
Doll from sight in his kennel. Then, wagging his tail, as though he had
done something smart, he went back to the party.

“I’m glad he’s gone,” said the Doll.

Carlo liked parties--there were always stray bits of cake dropping on
the floor and Carlo could pick them up. He didn’t mind it because they
had been on the carpet. And it was good for the carpet to have him pick
them up.

So, leaving the Sawdust Doll in his kennel, Carlo ran back to the
house. He wagged his tail as he thought of the good things the boys and
girls might give him. And they sometimes did give him good things. As
soon as he trotted in through the kitchen, where the door had been left
open to bring in another freezer of ice cream, Carlo found a piece of
cake on the floor. That made him wag his tail harder than before.

But the poor Sawdust Doll! Think of her left all alone out in the straw
of the dog’s kennel, with her new rose-colored silk dress on! Wasn’t
that too bad?

“This certainly is an adventure!” said the Sawdust Doll to herself.
“I’m glad this straw is nice and warm, or I might get cold. But I don’t
exactly like it here. It was better even on the closet shelf with
Jack-in-the-Box, though he did have to talk through a crack to me.”

For some time the Sawdust Doll lay in the straw of the dog kennel.
She sat up and looked about her, for, there being no one there with
human eyes to watch, the toy could do as she pleased. She even got up
and walked about, though it was hard work because the long pieces of
straw were tangled in her feet. She went to the door of the kennel and
looked out, first making sure no one was in the yard to see her.

“Dear me! I never could walk back to the house through the snow,” said
the Sawdust Doll to herself. “If it were summer time I might try it
after dark, when every one had gone to bed. But I never could do it now
in the snow. I’d simply catch cold and have the sawdust fever. No, I
shall have to stay here until some one comes for me. I hope that nice
girl Dorothy misses me soon, and comes and gets me.”

And, surely enough, Dorothy did miss her doll shortly after that. The
cake, ice cream, and other good things had been eaten, and after some
games had been played by the boys and girls, Dorothy said:

“Now let’s get my new doll again, girls! She must be lonesome waiting
for us to get through with our cake and ice cream.”

“Yes, we’ll get your doll,” said another girl.

Dorothy ran to the table where she had put her Sawdust Doll.

“Why! Why!” cried the little girl. “She isn’t here! She’s gone!”

“What is gone, Dorothy?” asked Mother. “Your piece of cake? You
shouldn’t have left it on the table, my dear.”

“No, Mother, I didn’t leave any cake on the table,” Dorothy said. “It
was my new Sawdust Doll. I left her here, and now she is gone!”

“Oh, that is too bad!” said Dorothy’s mother. “But are you sure you
left your doll on this table?” she asked the little girl.

“Oh, yes,” answered Dorothy.

“I saw the Sawdust Doll lying there,” said Helen, one of the party
guests.

“So did I,” chimed in Dick.

And then Dorothy looked sharply at her brother.

“Did you take my doll?” she asked him suddenly. “Did you take my new
doll that mother just gave me for my birthday?”

“Course I didn’t!” cried Dick. “Why should I take your doll? I don’t
play with dolls!”

“Dorothy thought perhaps you had taken it in fun,” gently said Mother.
“If you didn’t, perhaps Martha laid it in another place. We must look
for the Sawdust Doll.”

“We can make a game of it--like hide the thimble!” cried Dick.

“I don’t want my Sawdust Doll made into a game!” exclaimed Dorothy, who
was feeling sad.

“It is only in fun, and make believe,” said Mother. “That will be a
good way to find your pet, my dear. Come, children, look for Dorothy’s
doll.”

The Sawdust Doll was not the only one Dorothy had, but as it was her
newest toy she wanted that just then more than any of the others. So
she helped her boy and girl friends look in the different rooms for
the missing doll. The maid said she had not taken the Sawdust Doll
away, and no one could imagine where she was. And the tears came into
Dorothy’s eyes as minute after minute passed and the new toy was not
found.

And now we must see what is happening to the Sawdust Doll. For some
time, after going to the door of the kennel to look out, she lay
quietly in the straw. It kept her warm, for there was no fire in
Carlo’s house, as there was in the house where Dorothy and Dick lived.

After a while the Sawdust Doll heard some one walking toward the
kennel. She knew the sound of human footsteps, for she had often heard
them in the department store. And she knew it was not the Bold Tin
Soldier or the Calico Clown coming toward her now.

“I wish it were one of my friends,” thought the Sawdust Doll; “but it
cannot be. This person walks just like the watchman in the store. I
wonder who it is.”

And then a loud but pleasant voice spoke, and a man said:

“Well, well! I almost forgot about putting some clean straw in Carlo’s
kennel! That straw he has must be all wet with the snow. I’ll rake that
out and put in fresh for the dog. It will keep him warmer to-night.”

Something long and black, with sharp iron teeth, was thrust into the
kennel, and the next moment the straw was raked out, and the Sawdust
Doll went with it. Out she came in the midst of the straw.

The big gardener, for he it was who was going to give Carlo clean
straw, examined what he had raked out. He saw something pink, and,
looking at it, he said:

“Dear me, what a funny bone! Where could that have come from?”

He thought the Sawdust Doll was a bone that Carlo had hidden in the
kennel.

“Why! Why, it isn’t a bone after all!” exclaimed the gardener, as he
picked it up and looked at it more carefully. “It’s a doll! A Sawdust
Doll! I wonder where she came from!” and he turned the toy over and
over in his hands.




CHAPTER VII

IN THE RAG-BAG


The Sawdust Doll felt much better when the gardener had picked her out
of the straw that he had raked from Carlo’s kennel. For, though the
Sawdust Doll was only make-believe alive, she knew when real persons
handled her. Surely she ought to, for she had been handled enough times
since she was first made in the workshop of Santa Claus.

“Thank goodness some one has me in charge besides that fuzzy little
dog!” said the Sawdust Doll to herself. “I don’t like him at all,
though I don’t suppose he really meant to be mean to me. But I’m glad
the gardener has me. I hope he likes dolls, and doesn’t throw me into
the ash-barrel!”

The gardener was not going to do anything like that. He knew a good,
new doll when he saw one. And as he looked at the rosily dressed toy in
his hands, and then glanced toward the house, the man shook his head.

And the Doll stared at the man.

“I think some of the boys must have been playing tricks on the girls
at the party,” said the gardener. “Some of the boys must have hidden
this doll out in the straw. I’m glad I found her. I’ll take her back.
Dorothy will know to which little girl she belongs.”

So, dropping the rake with which he had been cleaning out Carlo’s
kennel, the gardener walked up to the house, and, wiping his feet at
the back kitchen door, as he knew the cook did not want her floor made
dirty, in the gardener went.

The cook was beginning to wash the cake and ice-cream dishes, for the
eating part of the party was over.

“Look here, Mary,” said the gardener to the cook, holding out the
Sawdust Doll. “See what I found in Carlo’s kennel.”

“Oh, for the love of peach pie!” cried the jolly cook. “That’s
Dorothy’s doll! Where ever did you find her? The whole house has been
upset looking for her. Where was she?”

“Out in the dog’s kennel. Some of the boys must have carried her there
for a joke.”

“Ho! Ho! It wasn’t any of the boys!” laughed the cook. “It must have
been Carlo himself. That dog is up to so many tricks. He carried off
Dorothy’s doll!”

“Well, the doll isn’t harmed any,” said the gardener. “She was in the
clean straw. Will you take her to Dorothy?”

“Indeed I will, the poor little dear! She’s been crying for fear her
new doll was lost. Thank you, Patrick! I’ll tell Dorothy you found her
doll for her.”

And when the cook went into the room where Dorothy and her little
guests were still hunting for the missing doll, you can easily guess
what joyous shouts there were.

“Oh, there she is! There she is!” cried Dorothy, when she saw her new
birthday toy. “Where did you find her, Mary?” she asked, taking the
Sawdust Doll in her arms.

“Patrick found her in the dog’s kennel,” the cook answered.

“Oh, Carlo! You bad dog!” cried Dorothy, and she shook her finger at
the curly poodle, who had come back to the house to see if he could
not get another piece of cake. “You’re a very bad dog to take my doll
away!”

And though perhaps Carlo did not know what it was all about, he must
have felt that he had done something wrong, for he ran out of the house
and crawled into his kennel, where, by this time, Patrick had put some
new straw.

“Where’s that thing I left here a while ago?” said Carlo to himself, as
he fussed around in the straw. “Where’s that pink thing I took off the
table? I was going to have some fun with it, but now it’s gone!”

And of course it was gone, for Dorothy had her Sawdust Doll back again,
and Carlo was very much surprised to find his plaything gone.

“Now we can have some nice games,” said Dorothy, when she had smoothed
out the pink dress of her toy. For the dress had been a little wrinkled
by Carlo’s teeth.

And then what fun there was at the birthday party! Dorothy did not feel
unhappy any longer, and she and the boys and girls played games.

“Did you have a nice time at your party, Dorothy?” asked Mother, when
the little girl was going to bed that night.

“Oh, I had a lovely time!” was the sleepy answer. “And so did my
Sawdust Doll. Thank you very much, Mother, for giving her to me.”

And Dorothy went to sleep, hugging her Sawdust Doll in her arms.

The Sawdust Doll did not go to sleep right away, though. She remained
awake, even though it was very dark in Dorothy’s room, only a little
night-light gleaming in the hall.

“I do wish some of my friends from Toy Town were here,” thought the
Sawdust Doll to herself, as she lay in the bed with Dorothy. “I wish
I could talk to the Calico Clown and the Bold Tin Soldier, and tell
them of my adventures. I’m sure neither of them was ever carried off by
a dog and hidden in a kennel. That is a most wonderful adventure, I’m
sure!”

And, after a while, when Dorothy was sound asleep, and it was all still
and quiet in the house, after the party, the Sawdust Doll did just as
she had done in the store--she made believe come to life and moved
about. For there was no one to watch her--she took good care of that.
And Carlo was out in his kennel, so he could not carry her off again.

Softly and carefully the Sawdust Doll got out of Dorothy’s bed, climbed
down by a chair, and walked over to the room where, on a shelf in the
closet, the poor, broken Jack-in-the-Box had to stay.

There was a long scarf hanging from the shelf down to the floor, and
the scarf had holes in it like a piece of lace. So, as the Sawdust
Doll was not very heavy, and as the Monkey on a Stick had taught her
something about climbing, the Sawdust Doll climbed the scarf-ladder
until she reached the shelf.

“Hello! who’s there?” asked the Jack, suddenly awakening in his box.

“It is I,” answered the Sawdust Doll. “I came to tell you about my
adventure.”

“Oh, that is very kind of you,” said Jack. “I wish I could spring up
and see you, but I’ll just have to look at you through a crack in my
box. You have no idea how troublesome it is to have a broken spring.”

“Yes, I can well imagine that it isn’t very jolly,” said the Sawdust
Doll. “But I’ll come close to your crack so I can whisper through it,
and tell you all about the party and my adventure in the dog kennel.”

“I shall be delighted to hear it,” said the Jack, most politely.

So up there in the dark, on the closet shelf, where no one could
see them any more than the toys in the store could be seen at their
midnight frolics, the Sawdust Doll and the Jack-in-the-Box talked to
one another.

“Dear me! That was quite remarkable,” said Jack, when the Sawdust Doll
had finished her story. “Just fancy! I never had anything like that
happen to me!”

“But then, you see, you are not stuffed with sawdust,” returned the
Doll, though not at all proudly.

“No, of course that makes a difference,” the Jack-in-the-Box said. “But
once, when I was shut up in my box, the black cat came and began to
play with the cover. She touched the catch with her paw, open flew the
box, and I jumped out right in her face! Say, Miss Sawdust Doll, I wish
you could have seen that cat run! I just wish you had been there!”

“Did she go fast?”

“Did she go fast? I should say she did! I never saw a toy train go any
faster. But of course that was in the long-ago days, before my spring
was broken,” sadly said Jack.

“I am sorry for you,” softly said the Sawdust Doll. “Maybe, some day,
you will be mended.”

“No, I am afraid it is too late,” sighed Jack.

So he and the Sawdust Doll talked together until, all of a sudden, Jack
called out:

“Hark!”

“What’s the matter?” asked the Sawdust Doll.

“The cook is grinding the coffee,” was the answer. “That means she is
up and getting breakfast. It will soon be daylight. You had better go
back where you came from. It would never do for you to be seen moving
about. Folks would think you were alive.”

“Yes, I had better go back,” said the Sawdust Doll.

Down the scarf-ladder she went, and soon she was in bed with Dorothy
again, and when the little girl awakened she never knew that her
Sawdust Doll had been wandering about in the night, talking to
Jack-in-the-Box.

“Oh, my dear!” exclaimed Dorothy, when, fully awake, she looked at her
Sawdust Doll on the pillow. “You have a big spot of ice cream on your
new rose-colored silk dress! That must have happened at the party. Oh,
dear! But I know what I can do! I’ll make you a gingham dress to wear
around every day. Yes, that’s what I’ll do! I’ll make you a gingham
dress!”

And after breakfast the little girl asked her mother if it would not be
a fine thing to make an every-day dress for the Sawdust Doll.

“I think it would be very nice,” Mother answered. “You may take my
rag-bag. You’ll find some odd pieces in it and you can, very nicely,
make a doll’s dress from them.”

So Dorothy got the rag-bag and, placing her doll down on a low bench
near her, began to measure her new toy for a gingham dress.

“Then if you drop ice cream on yourself it won’t be so bad,” said the
little girl. “A gingham dress will wash.”

All the morning long Dorothy sewed away on the dress for the Sawdust
Doll. She had it nearly done, while the Doll lay on a pile of cloth
near the rag-bag ready to be fitted.

Dorothy was just sewing a sleeve in the gingham dress, and thinking how
nice it would look on her doll, when there came a ring at the door, and
Mirabell, a little girl who lived in the next house, came in.

“Can you come over a minute, Dorothy?” asked Mirabell. “My mother is
baking, and she said I could make a little pie all by myself. And
there’s enough dough so you can make one, too! Come on over!”

“Oh, that will be fun!” cried Dorothy, and, forgetting for a moment all
about her Sawdust Doll and the new gingham dress, up jumped Dorothy
and away she ran with Mirabell, leaving the pieces of cloth, rags,
rag-bag, Doll and everything on the floor.

When Martha, the maid, came in a little later and saw the pile in
confusion on the floor, she just bundled everything up together--new
gingham dress, rags, Doll, and all--and stuffed them into the rag-bag.

“Dorothy forgot to pick up her playthings,” thought the maid, as she
stuffed the odd pieces of cloth into the rag-bag. “I’ll do it for her.”

And the maid never knew that she had also put the Sawdust Doll into the
rag-bag.




CHAPTER VIII

IN THE JUNK SHOP


“Dear me!” exclaimed the Sawdust Doll to herself, as she felt that she
was being stuffed into the rag-bag. “Dear me! This is dreadful! What
sort of an adventure am I going to have now?”

The maid carried the rag-bag to the cellar, where there was a much
larger bag, containing more rags, pieces of old carpet and other trash.

“It is nearly time Patrick sold the rags,” said the maid, as she
emptied the contents of the small rag-bag into the larger one. The
small rag-bag was kept in the sewing-room, where odds and ends were
put into it day by day until it was filled. Then it was emptied into
the larger bag down in the cellar, and, when that was full, it was
sold to the junk man. Patrick, the gardener, usually attended to this,
and he divided the money he got from selling the rags with Martha, the
maid, who emptied the smaller bag.

“I must tell Patrick to sell the rags to the first junk man he sees,”
said Martha to herself, as she emptied the small bag, Sawdust Doll and
all, into the larger bag in the cellar.

The poor Sawdust Doll was tumbled out from one bag to the other in the
midst of bundles of cloth, and the poor thing dared not say a word, or
try to get out, for if she had Martha, the maid, would have seen her,
and that isn’t allowed, you know.

“Patrick! Patrick!” called Martha to the gardener, as he was putting
up a clothes line in the yard, for the laundress was washing out the
napkins the children had used at the little girl’s birthday party. “Oh,
Patrick!” called Martha.

“Yes, yes! What is it?” asked the gardener, as he finished tying the
line to the clothes post.

“You’d better sell the rags to the first junk man that comes along,”
answered Martha. “I just emptied some more into the big bag, and
there’s quite a lot now. The bag is nearly full.”

“All right, I’ll sell ’em!” Patrick called back.

And a little while after that, before Dorothy had come home from
Mirabell’s house where she had gone to help make a little pie, the
jingling-jangling bells on a junk wagon were heard out in the street.

“Hi there! Hi there!” called Patrick, who, having finished tying the
clothes line, was out in the garage. “Hi there, junk man! Come here! I
have some rags to sell you!”

“And I want to buy rags,” answered the junk man.

He came in with his own big bag, and into that all the rags from the
bag in the cellar were emptied. And nobody saw the Sawdust Doll tumbled
out, in the midst of the rags, from one bag to the other. Patrick did
not see the Sawdust Doll, nor did Martha, the maid, nor the junk man.
He thought he was just buying rags--not a Sawdust Doll.

The rags were weighed, paid for, and tossed into the junk man’s wagon.
Then he drove off with them--drove off with the Sawdust Doll in the
middle of his old bag of rags, and he didn’t know a thing about it!

But the Sawdust Doll, herself, very well knew that something strange
was happening to her.

“Oh, dear!” she sighed. “I don’t know whether I like this adventure or
not! I wonder what will happen next!”

Away rattled the junk wagon, the ragged man on the seat calling from
time to time:

“Any rags? Any bottles? Any old clothes?”

He bought almost anything, did that junk man, but he never before, that
he knew of, had bought a Sawdust Doll.

When Dorothy came back from the house next door, after having helped
Mirabell bake a little pie, the first thing she thought of was her
Sawdust Doll.

“I must finish making her gingham dress,” thought the little girl. But
when she hurried to the playroom and saw nothing of the pile of rags
she had left there, with her thimble and needle on a table near by,
and when she saw nothing of her doll, the little girl cried:

“Oh, where is she? Where is she?”

“Where is who, my dear?” asked Mother.

“My Sawdust Doll,” answered Dorothy, and tears began to gather in
her eyes. “I left her here asleep on a pile of rags while I went to
Mirabell’s house. Now she’s gone! My Sawdust Doll is gone! Oh, maybe
Carlo carried her off again!”

“If he did we shall soon find her,” answered Mother. “I’ll help you
look.”

But Carlo was not around, and, a little later, when Dick came in, he
said the dog had been down the street, playing with him.

“Carlo didn’t take your doll, I know that,” said Dick.

“But who did?” asked Dorothy. “I left her right near the little
rag-bag, after I got some pieces from it to make her a gingham dress.”

It did not take long to find out what had happened. When Martha, the
maid, heard Dorothy asking about the small rag-bag and the pile of
goods that had been on the playroom floor, the maid exclaimed:

“Oh, I picked them up! I picked up the rags, put them in the little
rag-bag, and emptied them into the big bag in the cellar. I must have
picked up the Sawdust Doll, too, though I didn’t notice her.”

“Well, she must be down in the cellar bag, then,” said Mother. “Don’t
worry, Dorothy. We’ll soon have your doll back.”

But when Dorothy, Mother, and Martha went to the cellar they saw the
big bag limp and empty, hanging on a nail.

“Oh, Patrick must have sold the rags!” said Martha.

And when they asked Patrick about it, of course that was what he had
done; just as Martha had told him to do.

“I’ll get her back!” cried Patrick. “I’ll keep watch, and when I see
that junk man going past again I’ll get your doll back, Dorothy.”

“Can’t you find him now?” asked the little girl. “I want my new Sawdust
Doll awful much! Something is always happening to her! First Carlo took
her off to his kennel, then she got ice cream on her dress, and now a
junk man has her! Oh, dear!”

“I’ll get her back! I’ll get the Sawdust Doll back!” said Patrick, and
he hurried out to the street, thinking perhaps the junk man might be
just around the corner.

But the junk man was not in sight. With his wagon filled with rags and
bundles of newspapers, with the Sawdust Doll all wrapped up in pieces
of cloth in one of his bags, the junk man was far away.

All day long the junk man drove through different streets buying odds
and ends, and, all this while, he never knew he had the Sawdust Doll.

And poor Dorothy was crying her eyes out for her pet. She had other
dolls, but she wanted, most of all, to have her birthday present back
again.

At night the junk man drove to his shop, where he kept many piles of
rags, bottles, old automobile tires and different things that he sold
to other men.

After supper the bag, in which was the Sawdust Doll, was brought from
the wagon into the junk shop, and emptied out on the floor.

“Want to help me sort the rags, Tinka?” called the junk man to his
little girl.

“Oh, yes, I love to sort the rags,” Tinka answered. She was about as
old as Dorothy, but she did not live in such a nice house. “I will sort
the rags,” said Tinka. “If I find a pretty one, may I have a piece for
a hair-ribbon?”

“Yes,” answered her father, and he and Tinka began sorting over the
rags to pick out the silk and woolen ones from the linen and cotton.

Suddenly Tinka uttered a cry.

“Oh, look what I’ve found!” she exclaimed. “A doll! A real doll! Oh,
Papa! I have found a doll and she’s new! A doll with a pink dress!”

And Tinka held up the Sawdust Doll!




CHAPTER IX

A HAPPY VISIT


The junk man dropped a bundle of rags he was sorting and came around to
the side of the table where Tinka stood with the Sawdust Doll in her
arms. The little girl was crooning to the Doll a lullaby that was sung
in ancient times by an ancient people.

“Let me see the Sawdust Doll, Tinka!” said the junk man.

“Oh, but, Papa, she is asleep, now,” said Tinka softly.

“I will not wake her up,” and the junk man smiled at his little
daughter. “I will be careful not to wake her up.”

Then Tinka handed her father the Sawdust Doll. The junk man turned her
over and over in his hands, which were not very clean. Junk men cannot
keep their hands clean when they work any more than the coal man can.

“Dear me!” thought the Sawdust Doll as she felt herself being turned
over and over in the grimy hands of the junk man. “I hope he doesn’t
soil my rose-colored silk dress any more than it is. But then I am
going to have a new gingham one, anyhow. Oh, no! How can I have the new
gingham dress if I stay here in this junk shop?” thought the Sawdust
Doll.

You see, though Tinka made believe the Sawdust Doll was asleep,
Dorothy’s pet was really awake, and knew what was going on. Though, of
course, the Sawdust Doll would not move or speak as long as Tinka and
her father were looking on.

“Yes,” said the junk man slowly, “this is almost new. And yet she was
in a bag of rags. There must be some mistake.”

The junk man laid the Sawdust Doll on the table, and began thinking
over in his mind the different houses he had called at that day to get
bags of rags and bundles of papers. Tinka slowly came around from her
side of the table, and gently picked up the Sawdust Doll again.

“She is still asleep,” whispered the little girl. “But I will sing to
her once more.”

“Yes, sing, Tinka,” replied the junk man. “Sing to the Doll, and then
we must put her away, for I shall take her back in the morning.”

“Take her back! Oh, Papa! Are you going to take away the new Doll I
found in the rags?” and tears came into Tinka’s eyes.

“Yes, little daughter, she is not our Doll,” sadly answered the junk
man. “I bought the rags, not the Doll. Some little girl owns her, and
wants the Sawdust Doll as much as you do. It would not be right for us
to keep her.”

Tinka said nothing for a moment. She just held the Sawdust Doll in her
arms and looked at her, and she looked at the pretty rose-colored silk
dress. And Tinka never saw the ice-cream spot on it. If she had seen it
she would not have cared.

“I must take the Doll back to-morrow,” said the junk man slowly. “I
remember now where I bought the rags in which the Sawdust Doll must
have fallen or been put by mistake. A gardener at a big house called me
in and sold me the rags. He has sold me some before. In the morning,
before I go anywhere else, I will take the Sawdust Doll back.”

“Oh, Papa!” exclaimed Tinka, and that was all she said, but she hugged
the Sawdust Doll tightly in her arms. And when the junk man saw that
he said:

“You may hold the Doll until it is time for you to go to bed, Tinka.
You may hold her and sing to her. I will sort the rags myself.”

So Tinka sat down on a pile of old papers and rocked herself slowly to
and fro, singing the old sweet lullaby to the Sawdust Doll. And the
Sawdust Doll closed her eyes and seemed to go to sleep. But she was
really awake, and she was thinking of many things.

“This junk shop is not as nice a place as the home I had with Dorothy,”
thought the Sawdust Doll. “But Tinka loves me, and, after all, that
is what counts. If ever I see my old friends in the store, of what an
adventure I shall be able to tell them! Quite wonderful! How surprised
the Bold Tin Soldier will be, and how the Calico Clown will laugh when
he hears I was in a rag-bag!”

The junk man looked across the room and saw Tinka nodding sleepily.
Gently he took the Sawdust Doll from her arms and laid the toy on a
piece of paper up on the mantel. Then he carried Tinka to her own bed,
and the little girl murmured in her sleep:

“Oh, what a beautiful Sawdust Doll!”

The junk man sighed.

So the Sawdust Doll was laid by herself on the mantel, and she thought
many thoughts as the night passed. She could have moved around if she
had wanted to, for no one was watching her now.

“But what is the use?” she asked herself. “There is no one here to play
with--only bags of rags, bundles of paper, and such things as that.
There is not even a broken Jack-in-the-Box for me to talk to. I shall
sleep. In the morning I may have more adventures.”

And very early the next morning, before Tinka was awake, the junk man
drove off. And, on the seat beside him, wrapped in a paper, was the
Sawdust Doll.

“I certainly am getting more than my share of rides,” thought the
Sawdust Doll. “I wonder what is going to happen now!”

All the while the Sawdust Doll had been away on the junk-shop
adventure, about which I have told you, poor Dorothy was almost
heart-broken over the loss of her toy.

“Do you think I’ll ever get her back?” she asked over and over again.

“I hope you may get her back,” said Dorothy’s mother. But really Mother
had very little hope.

“There are so many junk men, and they all seem to look alike,” she told
Dorothy’s father. “I don’t believe Patrick will find the one to whom
he sold the bag of rags with the Sawdust Doll in it.”

But Dorothy kept on hoping, and every time the bell rang she ran to
the door, expecting it was her Doll come back. But night came, and the
Sawdust Doll was still missing. Dorothy cried herself to sleep.

At last morning came, and Patrick, going out to sweep off a light snow
that had fallen in the night, saw a junk wagon stopping in front of the
house.

“Ha, there he is! There’s the man I sold the Sawdust Doll to!” cried
the gardener. “There’s the junk man!”

The junk man got down off his seat and started up the path with
something in his hand.

“Did you find----” began Patrick.

“I bring her back!” broke in the rag-buyer. “My little girl, Tinka,
found a Sawdust Doll in the rags when she sorted them. I bring her
back--the Doll.”

“Well, thank goodness!” cried Patrick. “Dorothy will be glad of this!
Wait a minute, junk man!” he called back as he ran into the house.

When Dorothy saw her Sawdust Doll the little girl clapped her hands in
joy and cried:

“There she is! There she is! My Sawdust Doll has come back, and with
her same rosy silk dress. I don’t care if it has an ice-cream stain on
it! I love her!”

“Did the junk man bring the Doll back?” asked Dorothy’s mother, as the
little girl held her toy in her arms.

“Yes,” answered Patrick. “He’s outside now.”

“I’ll see him,” said Dorothy’s mother.

When she heard how Tinka had found the Doll in the rags, and how she
had wanted to keep the toy for herself, Dorothy’s mother said:

“I think Dorothy will want to send Tinka a doll. Not the Sawdust Doll,
for that is a birthday present. But I’ll find a doll for Tinka if you
will take it to her. You will, please?” and she smiled at the junk man,
who smiled and nodded in return.

When she was told about the junk man’s little girl, Dorothy picked
out one of her best dolls--the one Santa Claus had brought her the
Christmas before--and took it out to the junk man.

“That is for Tinka,” said Dorothy. “Please give it to her.”

“Ah, Tinka will be happy!” said the man. “She will thank you a thousand
times!”

And when the junk man went home that night with a doll that Tinka could
keep for her very own, the little girl, as she helped her father sort
the rags, said:

“Oh, how happy I am! Now I have some one I can sing to sleep!”

And she crooned a soft little lullaby to her own doll.

And Dorothy had her Sawdust Doll back again.

“And I’m never going to lay you down in a bundle of rags again, not
even to bake a strawberry shortcake!” she said. “Oh, how happy I am!”

One day Dorothy’s mother said to her:

“I am going shopping again. Do you want to come?”

“Oh, yes. And may I take my Sawdust Doll?” asked the little girl. Her
mother said she might, and they set off.

By this time Dorothy, with the help of Martha, the maid, had made a new
blue dress for the Sawdust Doll. It was of muslin, and would wash, so
that even if ice cream dropped on it not much harm would be done.

“Are you going to get me the White Rocking Horse?” asked Dorothy’s
brother, when he saw his mother and sister going out shopping.

“I’ll see,” was all the answer given him, but, somehow, because of the
way his mother smiled, Dick felt happy.

So Dorothy and her mother went back to the same store where the Sawdust
Doll had been purchased. Up they went in the elevator to the toy
department.

And there the Sawdust Doll saw her old friends. There stood the Lamb on
Wheels, as woolly and kinky as ever. And the Bold Tin Soldier, at the
head of his men, was ready to drive away any rats that might scurry out
of their holes. The Calico Clown almost seemed to be whispering to the
Monkey on a Stick, and the Candy Rabbit was looking down at the White
Rocking Horse.

“Oh, everything is just as I left it!” thought the Sawdust Doll. “How
I wish I could talk to my friends! But we dare not speak or move by
ourselves as long as any one is watching. However, I am happy just to
visit my friends again!”

And as Dorothy held the Sawdust Doll in her arms, and as Mother looked
about the store, suddenly a loud noise sounded off to one side of the
toy department. There was some shouting, and Dorothy dropped her doll
on the floor and ran, with her mother, to see what was the matter.




CHAPTER X

“OH, DEAR ME!”


When Dorothy hurried away with her mother to see what all the noise and
shouting was about, the little girl, as I told you, dropped her Sawdust
Doll on the floor. But, luckily, the Doll fell on a footstool that had
been left near the White Rocking Horse so little boys would find it
easy to climb up on his back. The stool was soft, and the Sawdust Doll
was not hurt in the least, though a bit shaken up.

And as Dorothy and her mother hurried out of the toy department, so did
the other shoppers and the clerks, so that the place was left all to
itself for a few minutes.

“Oh, now we have a chance to talk!” exclaimed the Monkey on a Stick.
“Dear Sawdust Doll, how glad we all are to see you again! Tell us
where you have been and what has happened to you. Have you had any
adventures?”

“Adventures!” exclaimed the Sawdust Doll, as she sat up on the
footstool, for there were no prying eyes to watch the toys now, and
they could do as they pleased. “Adventures? I should say I have had
them! It has been nothing but adventures since I left here.”

“Oh, tell us about them!” begged the Calico Clown. “Were they funny
ones?”

“Some were, and some were not,” answered the Sawdust Doll, and she told
everything that had happened to her from the time she left the store
until she had come back on this visit.

“Just fancy!” cried the Bold Tin Soldier. “Being in a junk shop! If I
had been there I would have cut a way for you out of the bag with my
sword!” he said.

“Thank you,” said the Sawdust Doll. “But, after all, everything came
out all right as it was. I am back with Dorothy again, and happy.”

“I wonder what all the excitement is about,” said the White Rocking
Horse, as he rocked to and fro.

“Oh, it’s just a man doing some magical tricks to amuse the children,”
said the Monkey on a Stick. “I can see him from here. He comes every
year at Christmas time to make it jolly for the children.”

“Now tell me some news!” begged the Sawdust Doll. “What has happened
here since I went away?” and she softly patted the wool of the Lamb on
Wheels. “Have you had any adventures?”

“Not many,” answered the Calico Clown. “We have just been waiting for
some one to buy us and take us away, as you were taken away.”

“I was almost sold yesterday,” said the White Rocking Horse. “But the
boy who got on my back to try me kicked me with his heels and scratched
some of my paint. I was glad when his father said he guessed he would
buy the boy a bicycle instead of me. I wouldn’t want that kind of
master--one who would kick you with his heels.”

“No, indeed!” said the Sawdust Doll. “My Dorothy is as kind as she can
be.”

“I have thought up a new joke since you went away,” cried the Calico
Clown. “It’s a riddle. Why does a bean bag----”

“Hush!” suddenly called the White Rocking Horse. “To your places, every
one! Here come the People!”

And as Dorothy and her mother returned from having gone to see the
magician take things out of a hat, the Sawdust Doll and the other toys
were as quiet and motionless as if they had never moved or spoken.

“Oh, look, Mother!” cried Dorothy. “I dropped my Sawdust Doll on this
cushion and she’s right here yet!”

Dorothy held her Sawdust Doll in her arms, and the little girl never
knew of the happy little visit her play toy had had with the old
friends.

“How much is this White Rocking Horse?” asked Dorothy’s mother of the
clerk behind the counter. And when she had been told the price Mother
smiled and said: “I must send Daddy to look at it. This is just the
kind Dick wants.”

[Illustration: Dorothy’s Father Fixes the Sawdust Doll

                                           _Page 118_]

When the shopping was finished the little girl went down in the
elevator with her mother. The Calico Clown and the Bold Tin Soldier, as
well as the other toys, wished they might call out a “good-bye” to
the Sawdust Doll as they saw her being carried away. And they wished
they might tell her to come again. But they did not dare, with all the
people around.

One day when it was snowing so hard that Dorothy and her brother could
not go out to play, Dick climbed into a rocking chair in the middle of
the playroom floor.

“I’m going to make believe this is a rocking horse,” he said. “I’m
going to take a long ride,” and he swayed to and fro. “Do you want to
ride with me, Dorothy?” he asked.

“Thank you, no. I am going to make a new dress for my Sawdust Doll,”
was the answer. “I’ll leave her here a minute till I get some thread.”

Dorothy, leaving her doll down on the floor, went to the sewing-room,
where her mother and Martha, the maid, were busy. Dick began to sway
backward, and forward in the rocking chair.

“Gid-dap!” cried the boy. “Go fast, Rocking Horse!”

Then, all of a sudden, the chair swung to one side and one of the
rockers went right over the Sawdust Doll. It tore a hole in her back
and the sawdust began to run out.

“Oh, my!” cried Dick, when he saw the accident. “Oh, what will Dorothy
say? Oh, I’m sorry!”

He got down off the chair and looked at the Doll on the floor. A little
stream of sawdust was running out over the carpet.

“Oh, dear me!” cried Dorothy, when she came back and saw what had
happened. “Oh, dear me! Oh, Mother! Dick has run over my Sawdust Doll
and she’s bleeding! Oh, dear me!”

She picked up her toy. The sawdust kept on running out, and the doll
became very limp in Dorothy’s hands.

“Oh, my Sawdust Doll has fainted!” she cried. “What shall I do?”

Mother came running in to see what the matter was. And, noticing the
sawdust running out of the Doll, she exclaimed:

“Hold your hand over the hole, Dorothy! That will keep the sawdust in!”

“Oh, but my doll is spoiled!” sobbed the little girl. “What made you
run over her, Dick, with your rocking-chair horse?”

“I--I didn’t mean to,” said Brother Dick. “I’m sorry!”

“Oh, my Sawdust Doll will die!” cried Dorothy.

But Daddy came in just then, and when he saw what the trouble was he
said:

“We’ll fix your doll, Dorothy. Don’t cry. We can make her well again.”

“How?” asked the little girl.

“I’ll get some new sawdust for her from the carpenter shop around the
corner,” was the answer. “You get a needle and thread, Mother, and I’ll
go after the sawdust.”

Dorothy dried her tears and watched while her mother got ready a
needle, with a long thread, and her thimble. By that time Daddy had
come back with something in a bag.

“Here is plenty of sawdust for the doll that fainted, Dorothy,” he said
with a jolly laugh.

Through the hole made in the cloth by the rocking chair, the new
sawdust from the carpenter shop was stuffed into the Doll. Then Mother
sewed her up.

“And I’ll give you a ride on my make-believe rocking horse,” said Dick.
“Come on, Dorothy!”

“All right,” answered the little girl. “I’ll wait until to-morrow about
making Dollie another dress.”

She climbed up into the chair with her brother, holding her toy in her
arms.

“Dear me!” thought the Sawdust Doll, “my adventures seem to keep up.
Just fancy _fainting_ because of an accident! How I should like to tell
the Calico Clown and the Bold Tin Soldier about it. I don’t believe
either of them ever fainted away.”

And as Dick and Dorothy and the Sawdust Doll rode on the rocking-chair
horse, the little boy asked his father:

“Do you think, Daddy, I’ll ever have a _real_ rocking horse?”

“Well, I shouldn’t be surprised if you did,” was the answer. “What kind
would you like?”

“A white one,” the boy answered. “Just like the one I saw in the store
where Dorothy’s Sawdust Doll was bought.”

“We’ll see,” promised Daddy.

And whether the little boy got his wish you may find out in the book
that comes after this. It is called “The Story of a White Rocking
Horse,” and it tells about the many adventures he had.

As for the Sawdust Doll, she lived with Dorothy for a number of years,
and you may be sure many things happened to her--more than I have room
to tell of in this book.

So I will say good-bye now, but I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if you
heard something more about the Sawdust Doll, as well as about the White
Rocking Horse.


THE END




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is
    entered into the public domain.