A piece mountain-ash wood is a good thing to keep close at hand, for it brings luck besides having power against witchcraft and evil. It was a small piece, which accounts for my being slightly under-sized even for a doll, and he treasured it, having brought it across the sea from Ireland. I have heard the story told so often by one or another of the Preble family that at times it seems I, also, must have looked on as the Old Peddler carved me out of his piece of mountain-ash wood. The narrative unfolds through the eyes of a tiny wooden doll with a nice brand of wood named Mehitabel (Hitty), who was carved early in the nineteenth century from the magical wood of the Mountain Ash tree by a peddler for a little girl, Phoebe Preble, who lives on Great Cranberry Island in Maine, during a winter when her father was away at sea.
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