Once more, on the wings of vision, Miss Terry was out in the snowy street. She was following the fleet steps of a little girl who carried a white-paper package under her arm. Miss Terry knew that she was learning the fate of her old doll, Miranda, whom her own hands had thrust out into a cold world.

 

Poor Miranda! After all these years to become the property of a thief! Mary was the little thief's name. Hugging the tempting¹ package close, Mary ran and ran until she was out of breath. Her one thought was to get as far as possible from the place where the bundle had lain. For she suspected that the steps where she had found it led up to the doll's home. That was why in her own eyes also she was a little thief. But now she had run so far and had turned so many corners that she could not find her way back if she would. There was triumph in the thought. Mary chuckled² to herself as she stopped running and began to walk leisurely³ in the neighborhood with which she was more familiar.

 

She pinched the package gently. Yes, there could be no doubt about it. It was a doll,—not a very large doll; but Mary reflected that she had never thought she should care for a large doll. Undoubtedly⁴ it was a very nice one. Had she not found it in a swell⁵ part of the city, on the steps of a swell-looking house? Mary gloated over the doll as she fancied it; with real hair, and eyes that opened and shut; with four little white teeth, and hands with dimples in the knuckles⁶. She had seen such dolls in the windows of the big shops. But she had never hoped to have one for her very own.

 

"Maybe it will have on a blue silk dress and white kid shoes, like that one I saw this morning!" she mused⁷ rapturously.

 

She pinched the spot where she fancied the doll's feet ought to be.

 

"Yes, she's got shoes, sure enough! I bet they're white, too. They feel white. Oh, what fun I shall have with her,"—she hugged the doll fondly,—"if Uncle and Aunt don't take her away!"

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