"My doll! My beautifulest doll!" sobbed Mary Jane, "my Marie Georgianna is
all run over!"

"Surely not, surely not, Mary Jane," said her mother as she picked up the
little girl and sat down, with her on her lap, on the porch steps, "dolls
don't get run over."

"My doll did," said Mary Jane positively, "see?"

Mrs. Merrill looked out into the street and there, sure enough, was the
wreck of the doll.

"Tell me how it happened, dear," said Mrs. Merrill and she gathered her
little girl tighter in her arms as she spoke for she knew that if a doll
had been run over, Mary Jane herself had not missed an accident by so very
much for the doll and the little girl were always close together.

Mary Jane wiped her eyes on her mother's handkerchief, snugged cozily in
the comfortable arms and told her story.

"I was going over to play with Junior like you said I could," she began
(Junior was the little neighbor boy who lived across the street in the big
white house), "and just as I got into the middle of the street I heard a
big, _big_ noisy 'toot-t-t-t-t' way down by Fifth Street--and you _know_,
mother" (and here Mary Jane sat up straight) "that you always told me if an
automobile was as far away as Fifth Street it was all right--so I went on
across. But this automobile didn't just come; it hurried fast, oh, so very
fast and by the time I was half way across the road it was so close I just
turned around and ran back to the curbstone and I was in such a hurry I
guess I must have dropped my Marie Georgianna!"