The boys laughed again. They all came around closer. “That’s mine,” Vila said softly. She reached over and touched the big stuffed cloth doll, with the hair coloured yellow and the cheeks bright red, that was smooth along the top and bottom sides like a fish but crisp along the edges from the seams. Patricia took it and looked at it. She looked at every one of their dolls--there were five, one of them was a six-inch bisque doll from the ten-cent store--and then smiled again. “I’ll bet you have nice dolls at home, haven’t you, Patricia?” Leone said in generous worship. “I’ll bet you’ve got lots nicer dolls than we have.” Patricia spoke for the first time. The children listened, with bright eager eyes wide open, to each soft little word. “I have fifteen dolls.” Marvin said, “Gee!” “Have you got them named?” Vila leaned over the grass toward Patricia, and then quickly hitched herself back, frightened at the sound of her own voice asking the question. “Oh, yes, I always name my dolls,” Patricia assured them. “My dolls have beautiful names. They’re all the names of the great actresses and singers.” And she began gravely to repeat them. “Geraldine Farrar, and Maria Jeritza, and Eva LeGallienne, and Amelita Galli-Curci....” While she was saying them, the boys looked at each other over her head, their eyes glinting, their mouths stretched into grins of smothered amusement, until Clyde broke into giggles. Leone was indignant. “Those are _lovely_ names! I think Patricia was just wonderful to think of them!” Vila stretched across the grass again. She touched the cloth doll and drew back her fingers as quickly as if it were hot. “Her name’s Dor’thy,” she whispered. After Patricia’s gracious acceptance of the dolls, the children wanted to show her all the treasures they had--even those they had never told anyone else about. Everything, they felt, would receive a kind of glory from her approval. They liked to repeat her name now. “Patricia.” “She wants to see the little pigs. Don’t you, Patricia?” “Aw, she does not! Do you, Patricia? She wants to see what I’ve got to make a radio.” Patricia looked from one to the other with her violet-gray eyes and let the others answer for her. But after a while she said with a cool, gentle, royal decision: “No. I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay right here in this round shade.” The children were highly delighted. They began to bring their treasures to her. Vila had run off to the edge of the garden and dug up two glass precious stones she had buried there, but when she came back to Patricia she was too shy to show them and kept them hidden in her hot little hand that got sticky and black from the earth clinging to them. The boys were getting quite bold. Marvin said: “I bet you never saw a mouse nest, Patricia.” “Patricia doesn’t care anything about that,” Leone said impatiently. “I wish you boys would go off somewhere anyway and let _us_ look after Patricia.” “I can show it to you, Patricia.”