New Lawns While You Wait

"I think it needs rolling," said the Lady Doll critically.

"Rolling! It needs new seed, and plenty of it," declared the China Doll.

"If it had been raked last fall when I suggested it," said the Sailor Boy Doll loftily, "it would be in good condition now. Nobody ever wants to do anything around here until it is too late."

The dolls were all standing on the porch of the doll house, looking at the lawn. It wasn't much to look at, though, as the Sailor Boy Doll said, it had possibilities.

"There's absolutely no use in having a house painted spick and span white, with green trimmings and a red roof," mourned the Lady Doll, "if the lawn is going to look like a shabby school yard. Every bit of the shrubbery is dead and you can't find a single blade of grass, no matter how hard you look. Disgraceful, I call it!"

"Well, let's fix it," suggested the China Doll cheerfully. "Come on, I'll help; somebody tell me what to do and I'll fix this old lawn up so you won't know it."

"No one doubted the China Doll's ability to do as she said, but the Lady Doll declined to give directions. Like a great many other folks, she could tell what was the matter with most anything, but when it came to "fixing" it or making things better, she hadn't the slightest idea what to do first.

It was the Sailor Boy who came to the rescue.

"The thing to do," he declared confidently, "is to rake the whole yard. You do that Sally Ann, and I'll make a roller for the ground."

"How'll you make a roller?" the China Doll, whose name was Sally Ann, wanted to know.

"You wait and see," said the Sailor Doll good-naturedly. "I'm going to the kitchen and get Dinah, the Cook Doll, to help me."

The China Doll was very curious, but she stopped asking questions and hunted up the rake, the wooden one made from [illegible] sticks. It was a very good, useful rake. The China Doll raked and raked and pretty soon she had the yard combed even. There wasn't a paper or a bit of fluff or a pebble-stone to be found when she finished. A pebble-stone, you know, is as big as a cobble-stone to the Dolls.

"Here I come with the roller," shouted the Sailor Boy Doll, dragging a curious-looking contrivance down the back steps.

He had made the roller from a baking powder can, filled with water to give it weight, and fitted with a forked wire for a handle. It made a fine roller and looked just like the big ones they use on the park lawns.

"You want to put the seed in first," advised the Solder Boy Doll, bringing out a package of bird seed, which is the favorite grass seed in Doll land.

"You don't put grass seed in; you sow it," objected the Lady Doll, who wouldn't step off the porch for fear of spoiling her slippers.

"All right, then, we'll sow it," agreed the Sailor Boy Doll pleasantly. "I wonder if Dinah will lend us the colander to use as a sifter."

Dinah would, it seemed, and the colander was a great success as a seed sieve. The China Doll walked behind the sower and raked a light layer of earth over the seeds.

When every inch of the ground had been covered -- of course, the front lawn wasn't very large, about as large as your best pocket handkerchief, we'll say -- the Sailor Boy Doll proudly trundled his home-made roller over the lawn and the thing was done. All they had to do was wait for the grass to grow.

"What ever shall we do for a lawnmower?" sighed the Lady Doll that night. She certainly could think ahead and she always saw trouble coming. "First thing you know we'll have a lawn and nothing to cut it with."

But the Sailor Boy Doll and the China Doll snickered as though they had a secret. Which they had. Two weeks after the bird seed was planted the yard was covered with wavy grass, and one afternoon when the Lady Doll came home from a card party she found it all neatly clipped and trimmed.

"What did you do it with?" she asked, amazed. "It looks beautiful!"

"Yes, doesn't it?" beamed the China Doll and the Sailor Boy Doll. "We did it with your embroidery scissors!"

-- unsigned [Josephine Lawrence?], Children's Page, Newark Sunday Call, 18 April 1920


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