"A dollar each! To pay that for dolls' coats when you can get a whole splendid doll all ready dressed for a dollar!"
"Ready-made dolls' clothes are a luxury," said Alice.
"I should say they are! They're awfully cunning though."
"A coat apiece!" cried Sara.
"I said you could get just one thing," responded Sara's grandmother with heavenly patience; "one beautiful thing!"
"Coats!" cried Sara, "coats for my children! Winter coats!"
"We'll come back to them later," said Alice with finality. "Sara has to get shoes now. It was specially to have her fitted with proper shoes that I brought her in."
"Coats!" mourned Sara; but led skillfully by Alice—shamelessly some would have thought—Sara let her mind now dwell on the joys of personal adornment, on white shoes and brown shoes and black shoes, and prattled like a brook about stockings that matched.
"The books are right over here," said Mrs. Marcey, senior, in a stage whisper. "Let's show her picture books. Sara darling, don't you like to look at picture books?"
Of course Sara loved to look at picture books.
"Wouldn't you like to buy a picture book, darling Sara?" said her grandmother ingratiatingly. "Look here. Alice, see this beautiful Hans Christian Andersen, and you said the other day that your children hadn't such a thing in the house. Now a little girl who really wanted to spend her money on this book would seem to me the cleverest little girl I'd ever seen. Everybody who ever heard of a little girl buying this lovely book would think that little girl was one who has good
