Honora’s face has flushed petal-pink, and their mother hardly leaves the room before she nudges Mabel.
“Do you think that’s it?” Her eyes go to the parcel on the chair.
“Let’s feel it,” says Mabel.
All summer they have admired the new child-doll propped in the shop window two doors down from their father’s pawnshop. It has younger features than most dolls, with blue sleep eyes that open and close, curled fingers, and two tiny, rounded teeth between parted lips. They each have a rag doll already, simple stuffed figures their grandmother sewed for them in their infancy. Maggie belongs to Mabel and Holly to Honora, but they’re nothing compared to the beautiful, bisque-headed child in the window. They pleaded for her, just the one doll to share.
“Look at her.” Their mother gazed through the window with open admiration when they showed her. “Skin finer than an eggshell. Even if we could afford her, she’d be in pieces in a minute.”
No amount of begging or cajoling has changed her mind since, but Honora wants nothing else for her birthday. Not a new dress, or shoes, or a satin ribbon. Only the girl with the two darling white front teeth, the pouty pink mouth, the fine painted brows.
“Oh no you don’t.” Grandmother heads them off as they move toward the chair. She shoos them away with a mock frown. “I heard that. Both of you, out of my kitchen now.”
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