Betsey was sitting on the slippery couch looking quite serious. She was not Mr. Betts today, nor even Dr. Betson. She was just a little girl with a sore throat, watching the big, real Dr. Lawrence as he rummaged around in his black bag. He put up his uncomfortable glass spoon that he pressed down one’s tongue with, and fished out an oblong pasteboard box.

“Oh!” said Betsey.

Dr. Lawrence looked up quickly. “Why do you say ‘Oh!’ Sister?” he asked.

Betsey’s eyes were fastened on the little box. “It’s just the shape of a Victrola,” she said.

“Hmmmm!” buzzed the big doctor, taking the cover off and dropping in some tiny pink tablets and some large white ones. “If you will take a white pill every hour, and gargle a pink one (dissolved in water, of course) every half hour, you shall have the box! And——hullo! Here’s a bit of wire just about right for a crank! Now, Mr. Tom, we’ll do up your burned thumb.”

Tom had been experimenting a little too much with Norah’s teakettle and the steam had made quite a big blister. Dr. Lawrence unrolled a sheet of pure white absorbent cotton.

“Oh!” said Betsey.

“Now, deary me!” cried Dr. Lawrence, pretending to be quite put out. “I suppose the child wants my cotton, too. Mr. Avery, make Betsey stop saying ‘Oh!’ I won’t have a thing left to give the little girl down the road, if this child takes all my pills, and boxes, and wire,—and now my cotton!”

Betsey slipped off the couch and danced around happily. She loved to hear Dr. Lawrence joke. “It makes such perfectly beautiful snow,” she said. “And just imagine my little automobile plowing along in it, making wheel-ruts just like yours.”

“Well, I suppose you’ll have to have it,” said Dr. Lawrence, resignedly. “I’ll charge your father for it, though,—see if I don’t. And poor Tom what will he do?”

“O you can have enough for his thumb,” said Betsey.

“Hmmmm!” buzzed on the doctor, winding away. “Down the road is a little girl nine years old. She has three dolls, and they’re about as long as Tom’s thumb.”

“Tom Thumb!” interrupted Betsey.

“Yes’m,” laughed Dr. Lawrence. “Well, this little girl Molly has a lame knee,—a very lame knee, and I had to send her to bed for a month.”

“A month!” echoed Betsey.

“Does it seem long to you?” asked Dr. Lawrence thoughtfully. “That’s just how it seems to her.”

“Does Molly play with her dolls?” asked Betsey.

“Yes, she sews for them, but they each need a party dress.”

“Can’t she make party dresses?”

“O yes, she can, if she has the proper materials. Now, you see a party dress requires some thin sort of fuzzy cloth——”

“You don’t mean fuzzy, Dr. Lawrence,” interrupted Betsey, smiling. “You mean soft and drapey.”

“That’s it. I see you know what a party dress is made of. And perhaps some ribbons and a little piece of lace. How about that?”

Betsey crossed the room, took one of the doctor’s big hands in both hers and gave it a hard squeeze. “I think you’re a perfectly lovely doctor, and I saw just what you were driving at all the time. And don’t you dare to go before I come back.”

And she went directly to the playroom, opened Madame Bettina’s box of cloth, and looked over its contents. She finally selected a dainty rosebud muslin with a pink border, a thin dimity covered with wreaths of tiny forget-me-nots, and a pretty yellow voile. She pulled out a length of baby ribbon to match each dress, and a handful of soft lace, and folded the whole carefully in white tissue-paper. Then she went down-stairs with such a sudden thought in her curly head that she sang a little tune all the way.

She burst into the library with her little parcel to find Dr. Lawrence talking and laughing with Father, and putting on his big fur coat.

“What’s up?” he asked, catching sight of Betsey’s shining face.

“Could you wait a minute?” begged Betsey. “You see, Mr. and Mrs. Delight are going to have a Christmas tree and invite some poor little children. And I want to write an invitation to Molly’s three dolls! She could send the dolls over by you when you come this afternoon, and perhaps I can take them back myself tomorrow.”

“Good enough!” said the doctor good-naturedly, sliding out of his coat again. “Molly will be so glad she won’t know what to do. I’ll wait.”

Betsey climbed in haste into the big desk chair and wrote carefully on her blue notepaper:

And on the little blue envelope she wrote, “For Molly’s three dolls.”

“I will deliver it directly,” said Dr. Lawrence, “and this afternoon I will bring the company.” And he blew a kiss to Betsey for thanks.

The moment the doctor had gone, Mr. Betts went to his shop and began on his Victrola, for this was to be Mr. Delight’s present to his wife. Mr. Betts cut the slender legs with a sharp penknife and bent out the tiny doors. Then he pasted shiny dark-red paper all over the outside and pushed in the crank.

“It almost looks as if it would play,” declared Betsey. Then she took a white pill and gargled a pink one, for she always kept her promise. Then all was ready.

“O William!” said Mrs. Delight, sitting down on the gilt sofa beside her husband, “don’t you think we could get the Christmas tree ourselves?”

“Indeed we could! Put on your long coat and furs, and I will bring the car around, and we will find one.” Betsey spread out the soft white snow for the forest, and dressed Mr. Delight in his gray fox coat with its curly black collar. Then she put on Mrs. Delight’s long brown coat and fastened up her lovely ermine furs. “The little darling!” she said, kissing her, and settling both the little dolls in the automobile.

The car did make a fascinating rut in the snow, and when Betsey walked Mr. Delight over to the hemlock trees he left a print of each tiny footstep.

Whang! Whang! resounded his tiny axe. Finally the tree toppled over with a delightful thud,—it was only the very tip of Betsey’s real tree which stood down-stairs ready for lighting.

“O the sweet little tree!” cried Betsey, seizing it, and, I am sorry to say, leaving the little couple stranded in the forest.

“I’ll set it in one of my wooden circles that seam-binding comes on, and cover it with green crÊpe paper.”

First she cleared all the furniture out of the little drawing-room and set up the tree. Then she began to wind her shining tinsel and paper chains around it, and hung on her dazzling, colored glass balls, blue and red, and green and gold. And then she hung presents by the dozen on it. A tiny rocking-horse and a sled, she had to place at the foot of the tree.

“You poor things!” she exclaimed at last, catching sight of Mr. Delight lying on his back in the snow. “You must come and get dressed in time for your own party.”

“I think, William,” began Mrs. Delight enthusiastically, “that I will wear my blue accordion-plaited crÊpe-de-chine.”

“And I will wear my dress-suit,” said Mr. Delight, as Betsey slipped his tiny cuffs up his sleeves.

“You can stand here,” said Betsey, setting up the host and hostess by the little Victrola, “and then you will be all ready when the children arrive.”

And she went down to get ready herself.

“Don’t you think it would be nice, Betsey,” said Mother, as she buttoned Betsey’s blue cashmere dress, “if you should make a few clothes for Molly’s children? Just some odd things like a kimono or a sweater?”

“I’m going to,” said Betsey happily, nodding her curly head. “I have an old gray golf-glove that I can make a sweater of,——the wrist for the sweater part, and two fingers for the sleeves.”

“That’s my kind daughter,” said Mother, approvingly. “Now run down and let the doctor in.”

“Here are those three children!” cried Dr. Lawrence, holding out a square box. “Please hurry and take them! Bless me! I didn’t take a minute’s comfort for fear I should smash them to bits! Can I come to the party? How’s the throat?”

Betsey laughed at his list of questions and opened her mouth obediently.

“Fine! Fine!” said the doctor, peering at the throat over his spectacles. “Christmas day will find you as well as ever. Now, for that, can’t I come to the party?”

“If you’d like to,” said Betsey, her eyes dancing, for she knew that Dr. Lawrence would make the best playmate a little girl ever had. And she led the way with Molly’s dolls, all dressed in the new party dresses, made since morning by the delighted Molly,—every stitch by hand.

“Well, what a fine man your Mr. Delight is!” declared Dr. Lawrence, sitting down heavily in the big chair before the doll-house.

“He is. He doesn’t drink or smoke,—just like Father, you know,” said Betsey.

“I should know that to look at him,” said Dr. Lawrence. “And what a pretty little wife he has, to be sure!”

“Here come the children, William,” cried Betsey in Mrs. Delight’s sweet voice.

“Yes, yes, my dear!” boomed Dr. Lawrence hastily, taking a tiny Dutch boy and a Kewpie doll out of his pocket. “I found two more poor children, Edith, and brought them along. They live in the alley!”

“O lovely!” said Betsey, admiring the Kewpie’s white fur suit. “Let’s show them the tree the very first thing.”

And as the children stood speechless around the tree, Betsey and her playmate untied parcel after parcel, introduced the Dutch boy to his new sled, and laughed to hear Dumpling growl at the rocking-horse.

“Dinner am served, sah,” drawled Dr. Lawrence, poking Dinah’s head between the pink portiÈres.

“Get into line, then, children,” giggled Betsey, “and march into the dining-room.”

Eight dolls are quite a handful for even two people to attend to, but Betsey and the doctor finally managed to seat the five children around the big table and get them all waited upon by Dinah and Mrs. Delight. Betsey had made a big paper brick of ice cream, made up of tiny cubes of different colors, exactly like the big one that was waiting down-stairs for her own Christmas dinner.

“You’re a mighty good cook, missus!” piped up Dr. Lawrence for the Kewpie, rolling his eyes at Dinah. Just then the nursery clock struck four.

“Bless my soul! I must go!” shouted Dr. Lawrence, getting up in a great rush and nearly upsetting the whole house.

“O I’m sorry!” said Betsey, following him down-stairs,—“but I’m very much obliged for this short call. And tomorrow can I go and take Molly’s dolls back to her?”

“I think you may. If you gargle, you know.”

The two entered the library where Father and Mother were seated.

“I never saw a little girl in all my life,” said Dr. Lawrence to nobody in particular, “who played so charmingly with her dolls. Now I have a little niece who had the greatest doll-house last Christmas that you ever laid eyes on. It was just perfect. Little marble-topped tables, and desk telephones, and clothes—! Why, her dolls had so many clothes they didn’t know what to do. And all made,—every one of ’em,—all finished. I never used to understand why she didn’t play with ’em. And now,”—he made a low bow to Betsey,—“now I know.”

“Because she didn’t have anything to make?” questioned Betsey.

“Exactly so,” said Dr. Lawrence. “Elise had nothing to do but dress and undress those dolls. She couldn’t talk for them because there was nothing to say. In fact, I’d like to give a perfectly bare doll-house to every little girl I know. I wouldn’t give her a single piece of furniture, or any money to buy it with, either.”

“Betsey has had just a dollar this year for baby ribbon and tissue-paper and white cardboard,” remarked Mrs. Avery with a smile.

“Well, then, for only a dollar,” replied Dr. Lawrence, “you are learning many good lessons, Mistress Betsey, with your sewing and carpentering, and laying rugs. And I hope you will play dolls until you’re quite grown up!”

And now (this being a true story), if you would like to know how old Betsey was when she finally covered up the House of Delight, and packed away her dear little dolls, just turn this page and hunt for a tiny figure hidden in one corner!