Not much was said.
Once in a lonely place in the road there was a volley of severe
questions from her aunts, and young Lucretia burst out in a desperate
wail. "Oh!" she cried, "I was going to put 'em right back again, I was!
I've not hurt 'em any. I was real careful. I didn't s'pose you'd know
it. Oh, they said you were cross an' stingy, an' wouldn't hang me
anything on the tree, an' I didn't want 'em to think you were. I wanted
to make 'em think I had things, I did."
"What made you think of such a thing?"
"I don't know."
"I shouldn't think you would know. I never heard of such doings in my
life!"
After they got home not much was said to young Lucretia; the aunts were
still too much bewildered for many words. Lucretia was bidden to light
her candle and go to bed, and then came a new grief, which was the last
drop in the bucket for her. They confiscated her rag doll, and put it
away in the parlor with the clove apple, the nautilus shell, and the
gift-book. Then the little girl's heart failed her, remorse for she
hardly knew what, terror, and the loss of the sole comfort that had come
to her on this pitiful Christmas Eve were too much.
"Oh," she wailed, "my rag baby! my rag baby! I--want my--rag baby. Oh!
oh! oh! I want her, I want her."
Scolding had no effect. Young Lucretia sobbed out her complaint all the
way up-stairs, and her aunts could distinguish the pitiful little wail
of, "my rag baby, I want my rag baby," after she was in her chamber.
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