“I’ll tell you all about it in a minute,” went on Katy. “But first I must find Alexander, and send him off to meet papa and beg him to hurry home.” She went to the head of the stairs as she spoke, and called “Debby! Debby!” Debby answered. Katy gave her direction, and then came back again to the room where the other two were sitting.
“Now,” she said, speaking more collectedly, “I must explain as fast as I can, for I have got to go back. You know that Mrs. Ashe’s little nephew is here for a visit, don’t you?”
“Yes, he came on Saturday.”
“Well, he was ailing all day yesterday, and to-day he is worse, and she is afraid it is scarlet-fever. Luckily, Amy was spending the day with the Uphams yesterday, so she scarcely saw the boy at all; and as soon as her mother became alarmed, she sent her out into the garden to play, and hasn’t let her come indoors since, so she can’t have been exposed to any particular danger yet. I went by the house on my way down street, and there sat the poor little thing all alone in the arbor, with her dolly in her lap, looking so disconsolate. I spoke to her over the fence, and Mrs. Ashe heard my voice, and opened the upstairs window and called to me. She said Amy had never had the fever, and that the very idea of her having it frightened her to death. She is such a delicate child, you know.”
“Oh, poor Mrs. Ashe!” cried Clover; “I am so sorry for her! Well, Katy, what did you do?”
“I hope I didn’t do wrong, but I offered to bring Amy here. Papa won’t object, I am almost sure.”
“Why, of course he won’t. Well?”
“I am going back now to fetch Amy. Mrs. Ashe is to let Ellen, who hasn’t been in the room with the little boy, pack a bagful of clothes and put it out on the steps, and I shall send Alexander for it by and by. You can’t think how troubled poor Mrs. Ashe was. She couldn’t help crying when she said that Amy was all she had left in the world. And I nearly cried too, I was so sorry for her. She was so relieved when I said that we would take Amy. You know she has a great deal of confidence in papa.”
“Yes, and in you too. Where will you put Amy to sleep, Katy?”
“What do you think would be best? In Dorry’s room?”
“I think she’d better come in here with you, and I’ll go into Dorry’s room. She is used to sleeping with her mother, you know, and she would be lonely if she were left to herself.”
“Perhaps that will be better, only it is a great bother for you, Clovy dear.”
“I don’t mind,” responded Clover, cheerfully. “I rather like to change about and try a new room once in a while. It’s as good as going on a journey—almost.”
She pushed aside the half-finished dress as she spoke, opened a drawer, took out its contents, and began to carry them across the entry to Dorry’s room, doing everything with the orderly deliberation that was characteristic of whatever Clover did. Her preparations were almost complete before Katy returned, bringing with her little Amy Ashe.
Amy was a tall child of eight, with a frank, happy face, and long light hair hanging down her back. She looked like the pictures of “Alice in Wonderland;” but just at that moment it was a very woful little Alice indeed that she resembled, for her cheeks were stained with tears and her eyes swollen with recent crying.
“Why, what is the matter?” cried kind little Clover, taking Amy in her arms, and giving her a great hug. “Aren’t you glad that you are coming to make us a visit? We are.”
“Mamma didn’t kiss me for good-by,” sobbed the little girl. “She didn’t come downstairs at all. She just put her head out of the window and said, ‘Good-by; Amy, be very good, and don’t make Miss Carr any trouble,’ and then she went away. I never went anywhere before without kissing mamma for good-by.”
“Mamma was afraid to kiss you for fear she might give you the fever,” explained Katy, taking her turn as a comforter. “It wasn’t because she forgot. She felt worse about it than you did, I imagine. You know the thing she cares most for is that you shall not be ill as your cousin Walter is. She would rather do anything than have that happen. As soon as he gets well she will kiss you dozens of times, see if she doesn’t. Meanwhile, she says in this note that you must write her a little letter every day, and she will hang a basket by a string out of the window, and you and I will go and drop the letters into the basket, and stand by the gate and see her pull it up. That will be funny, won’t it? We will play that you are my little girl, and that you have a real mamma and a make-believe mamma.”
“Shall I sleep with you?” demanded Amy,
“Yes, in that bed over there.”
“It’s a pretty bed,” pronounced Amy after examining it gravely for a moment. “Will you tell me a story every morning?”
“If you don’t wake me up too early. My stories are always sleepy till seven o’clock. Let us see what Ellen has packed in that bag, and then I’ll give you some drawers of your own, and we will put the things away.”
The bag was full of neat little frocks and underclothes stuffed hastily in all together. Katy took them out, smoothing the folds, and crimping the tumbled ruffles with her fingers. As she lifted the last skirt, Amy, with a cry of joy, pounced on something that lay beneath it.
“It is Maria Matilda,” she said, “I’m glad of that. I thought Ellen would forget her, and the poor child wouldn’t know what to do with me and her little sister not coming to see her for so long. She was having the measles on the back shelf of the closet, you know, and nobody would have heard her if she had cried ever so loud.”
“What a pretty face she has!” said Katy, taking the doll out of Amy’s hands.
“Yes, but not so pretty as Mabel. Miss Upham says that Mabel is the prettiest child she ever saw. Look, Miss Clover,” lifting the other doll from the table where she had laid it; “hasn’t she got sweet eyes? She’s older than Maria Matilda, and she knows a great deal more. She’s begun on French verbs!”
“Not really! Which ones?”
“Oh, only ‘J’aime, tu aimes, il aime,’ you know,—the same that our class is learning at school. She hasn’t tried any but that. Sometimes she says it quite nicely, but sometimes she’s very stupid, and I have to scold her.” Amy had quite recovered her spirits by this time.
“Are these the only dolls you have?”
“Oh, please don’t call them that!” urged Amy. “It hurts their feelings dreadfully. I never let them know that they are dolls. They think that they are real children, only sometimes when they are very bad I use the word for a punishment. I’ve got several other children. There’s old Ragazza. My uncle named her, and she’s made of rag, but she has such bad rheumatism that I don’t play with her any longer; I just give her medicine. Then there’s Effie Deans, she’s only got one leg; and Mopsa the Fairy, she’s a tiny one made out of china; and Peg of Linkinvaddy,—but she don’t count, for she’s all come to pieces.”
“What very queer names your children have!” said Elsie, who had come in during the enumeration.
“Yes; Uncle Ned named them. He’s a very funny uncle, but he’s nice. He’s always so much interested in my children.”
“There’s papa