Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/93

 spirit mended her dolls for her, and made rope hair for their too rigorously sterilized heads, and helped her play at housekeeping, and assisted in the moulding of mud-pies, and sat and patiently looked on at many unsuccessful sewing efforts. He even forgave her passionate and ghoulish love for the graveyard, and retired there to eat green apples and salt with her, and gathered May-flowers for her, and carved her initials on the old beech-tree in the cow-pasture.

Not that Lonely's heart had either failed or betrayed him, or that he was deep in love with Annie Eliza. His passion had long since been ideally consecrated to a certain Little Eva, who had appeared two years before in The Holden Combination Uncle Tom's Cabin Company, and sold her photographs between the acts—a beautiful, golden-haired, azure-eyed creature, half angel and half girl, whose dress he had touched as she passed down the crowded aisle, whom he had never so much as spoken to, and yet of whom he still brooded and dreamed. It is true Annie Eliza had her charm. She lisped just a little, and what, thought Lonely at times, could be prettier