"
"And could you find Maggie, do you think? Perhaps she would enjoy the
ride, too."
Bobby lifted up his voice in a shrill yell, "Mag! Oh--oh--Mag!"
The excited cry was caught up by the watching children, and the
neighborhood echoed their calls. "Mag! Oh, Mag! Somebody wants yer,
Mag! Come a-runnin'. Hurry up!"
Their united efforts were not in vain. From the rear of a near-by house
little Maggie appeared. A dirty, faded old shawl was wrapped about her
tiny waist, hiding her bare feet and trailing behind. A sorry wreck of
a hat trimmed with three chicken feathers crowned her uncombed hair,
and the ragged remnants of a pair of black cotton gloves completed her
elegant costume. In her thin little arms she held, with tender mother
care, a doll so battered and worn by its long service that one wondered
at the imaginative power of the child who could make of it anything but
a shapeless bundle of dirty rags.
"Get a move on yer, Mag!" yelled the masterful Bobby, with frantic
gestures. "The princess lady is a-goin' t' take us fer a ride in her
swell limerseen with her driver 'n' everything."
For one unbelieving moment, little Maggie turned to the two miniature
ladies who, in costumes that rivaled her own, had come to ask the cause
of this unseemly disturbance of their social affair.
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