Do you remember Biddy O'Dolan, the little rag-picker and ash girl who found Lily De Koven's broken doll in the ash-can that cold winter's morning? I have not forgotten my promise to tell you the rest about her.
Biddy had a boy-friend, a little Irish boy, who called himself "Chairlier-Shauzy." I suspect his name was Charley O'Shaughnessy. He was just as poor and alone in the world as Biddy, and almost always staid in the same cellar at night.
When Biddy ran off with her doll that cold morning, she not only thought of the hospital and the little girl who had there brought her the flowers, but she thought how she would tell Charley that night about her doll.
The first thing to be done was to get Dolly a dress, and this was the way Biddy managed it. She took an old knife and hacked out a piece of her skirt, then she pulled out of her dingy pocket a little wad. A wad of what? Pins. Pins that she had picked up on the street in the summer, when she swept the street crossings, and had stuck thick and "criss-cross" in a bit of woollen rag. With some of these pins Biddy fastened together the two sides of the cut in her skirt. Next she took the piece of cloth she had cut out, and punched her tough little forefinger through it in two places, and through one of these holes pushed the whole arm and through the other the broken arm of her doll, and pinned the cloth together in the back.
Thus Dolly was dressed, and nearly as well as Biddy, too. Biddy had been very quick about this, and had often looked over her shoulders to see who came in and out of the cellar.
You who do not live in a cellar, and do not get shoved about and slapped as Biddy did, can hardly imagine how glad she was that no one happened to take notice of her.
She hid Dolly under the straw where she was to sleep at night, and then hurried out to pick over as many more ash cans and barrels as she could, in hopes of finding something this time which would please Mrs. Brown, so that she could dare to show her doll, and perhaps be allowed to sit up and play with it a little.
Mrs. Brown was the cross old woman who kept the cellar, and the children on the street called her "Grumpy."
Biddy did not find anything in particular, and got fewer pennies than usual for errands and for showing people the way to places, so that old Mrs. Brown was very cross indeed, and Biddy went to bed without daring to pull Dolly out where she could see her. She lay awake, with her hand on it, waiting for Charley.