Page:The New-Year's Bargain (1884).djvu/65

 day, when doing this in an old garret, I found the doll, who, as I said, was living in a closet. They had put her there to be out of the way of the cleaning.

"Her name was Maria. She was big, but not very beautiful. Her head was dented, and there were marks of finger-nails on her cheeks, which were faded and of a purplish-pink. But her arms and legs were bran new, and white as snow, and her body was round and full of sawdust. I couldn't understand this at all until she explained it. Her head, it seemed, was twenty-five years old; and her body had only been in the world six weeks!

"Once, she said, she had possessed a body just the same age as her head, and then she belonged to a person she called 'Baby May.' Baby May used to bump her on the floor, and dig the soft wax out of her cheeks with her nails. This treatment soon ruined her good looks; and when she mentioned this, Maria almost cried,—but not quite, because, as she said, years had taught her