"I didn't do it," said Tibbie, lifting a pale face with perfectly truthful eyes. "I was just as careful! She was one of my daughters; I had her in my lap rocking her to sleep with the others; she must have slipped off my lap--there were too many for one lap, I guess--but I didn't step on her. Sure, Sally--sure as I live, I didn't step on her!" "Oh, law! You must have rocked on her. Oh, Tibbie, what'll I do!" She picked up the doll to examine it, but saw at once that the little face could not be made right again. Tibbie watched her without a word; her voice seemed to have sunk far below reach. Sally moved the dolls about tentatively, so that ninety-nine should cover the same space as a hundred. Certainly at first glance the one she held would never be missed. "But what's the good?" she said, throwing it down. "They'll count them, and there'll be the mischief of a fuss. Oh, Tibbie"--and she had reached the end of her good-nature--"why did I ever think of bringing you here? Now look at all the trouble you've brought on me, when I thought you'd be so careful! And I told you and told you till I was hoarse. And here you've ruined all!" Tibbie's eyes could not bear to meet Sally's. She stood with her hands behind her, speechless and motionless, in the middle of the floor. "I declare I don't know what to do!" Sally exclaimed, dropping her arms and sitting down before the wreck. "I wish I'd never seen 'em! I wish there'd never been any Christmas! Oh, it's a great job, this! Tibbie, you've done for me this time!" At this moment Miss Catherine came in to hurry them. "She's broken one of them!" blurted out Sally. "You don't mean it!" "Yes, she has!" "Let me see it. Oh, you wicked child! She's smashed its face right in! Now who ever heard of such naughtiness?" Tibbie twisted about ever so little, to get her back turned towards the two. "She didn't do it out of naughtiness at all, Miss Catherine. She's as good a child as ever lived!" At that Tibbie's shoulders gave a little convulsive heave. "It was an accident entirely. But that's just as bad for me. I suppose I shall have to say it was me did it." "And then they'll say what was I doing while the kitchen help was poking about in the Mrs.'s chamber. No; you don't get me into trouble, Sally Bean! You'd much better say how it was--how that you asked me if you just might bring a little girl to look, and I said you might, out of pure good-nature, being Christmas is rightly for children, and I've a softness for them. And while we was both in the kitchen, she slipped away from us and came here and done it before we knew. And the child herself will say that it was so. You'll be packed off dead sure out of this place if you let on you meddled with them yourself. She won't have her things meddled with--There goes the bell. There comes that old cat Bonnet." She hurried off to open.