Her china twins had but one leg and one arm between them, and not a sign of a head. Her pretty wax Rosa was without a nose.

And as to her guttapercha baby, it was so wrinkled and ugly that Weezy rubbed the window-panes with it when she played at cleaning house. Phebe Redlan cut paper dolls for her by the hour, but these frisked out of the window or into the fire; and of Weezy's large family there was left only one sound child.

This was little Sambo, knit of worsted; black face, scarlet jacket, yellow trousers, and all. When he tumbled into the wash-bowl Weezy squeezed him out, and dried him over the register. When lie ravelled mamma darned him, and made him as good as new.

O, he nicest kind of a doll! and from his white sewing-silk teeth to his black stocking-yarn toes, Weezy loved every inch of him. Yet she did love to punish him. One morning when she found him in papa's boot she shook him till one of his bead eyes dropped out.

"What for Sambo run away and hide?" cried she. "Now mamma mus' tie Sambo, 'cause Sambo did n't mind."

She looked about the hall for something to tie him to, and saw papa's overcoat on the hat-tree. The buttons on the back of it were just within her reach.

"There! Sambo must be tied till he is a good boy," said she, winding the ends of his tiny scarf round one of the buttons.

Then, leaving the poor doll hanging by his neck, she danced off to the kitchen to tease Bridget for "two big plums."

Pretty soon Papa Haynes came out of the sitting-room to go down town. It was rather dark in the hall, and he put on his overcoat without seeing the doll. Next he drew on his gloves, and walked briskly into the street with Sambo bobbing up and down from the button at his back.

It was funny enough! One little boy laughed so hard that he rolled off the doorstep. Some school-children on the corner shouted, and clapped their hands. Papa Haynes wondered what all the noise was about. He could n't see anything to laugh at.

He might have gone on right through the village with Sambo's yellow legs dancing a jig behind him, if the minister had n't called to him.

"Sir?" said papa, wheeling in front of the minister's gate so suddenly that the doll bounced against him.

"Why, what is this?" he went on, reaching his hand behind his back.

"Something that belongs to Weezy, I fancy," laughed the minister, unwinding Sambo's scarf.

When Papa Haynes saw the doll he could n't help laughing too.

"Well, I must say I've cut a pretty figure," said he, with a very red face. "No wonder the boys shouted!"

He felt like tossing Sambo over the fence, but then he thought of his little daughter.

"I suspect Weezy is crying this minute for her lost baby," said he, cramming Sambo, head first, into his pocket. "I'll take it home to her this time, but she must look out how she ties it again to my coat-button!"

—FENN SHIRLEY.