[Ill.u.s.tration: DOTTY AND KATIE VISITING THE BLIND GIRLS.]
"I know your dress is pretty," said Octavia, gently, "and I know you are pretty, too, your voice is so sweet."
"Well, I eat canny," said Katie, "and that makes my voice sweet. I"se got "most a hunnerd bushels o" canny to my house."
"Have you truly?" asked the children, gathering about Flyaway, and kissing her.
"Yes, and I"se got a sweet place in my neck, too; but my papa"s kissed it all out o" me."
"Isn"t she a darling?" said Octavia, with delight.
"Yes," answered Dotty, very glad to say a word to such remarkable children as these; "yes, she is a darling; and she has on a white dress with blue spots, and a hat trimmed with blue; and her hair is straw color. They call her Flyaway, because she can"t keep still a minute."
"Yes, I does; I keeps still two, free, five, _all_ the minutes," cried Katie; and to prove it, she flew across the yard, and began to pry into one of the play-houses.
"She doesn"t mean to be naughty; you must scuse her," spoke up Dotty, very loud; for she still held unconsciously to the idea that blind people must have dull ears. "She is a nice baby; but I s"pose you don"t know there are some play-houses in this yard, and she"ll get into mischief if I don"t watch her."
"Why, all these play-houses are ours," said little curly-haired Emily; "whose did you think they were?"
"Yours?" asked Dotty, in surprise; "can you play?"
Emily laughed merrily.
"Why not? Did you think we were sick?"
Dotty did not answer.
"I am Mrs. Holiday," added Emily; "that is, I generally am; but sometimes I"m Jane. Didn"t you ever read Rollo on the Atlantic?"
Dotty, who could only stammer over the First Reader at her mother"s knee, was obliged to confess that she had never made Rollo"s acquaintance.
"We have books read to us," said Emily. "In the work-hour we go into the sitting-room, and there we sit with the bead-boxes in our laps, making baskets, and then our teacher reads to us out of a book, or tells us a story."
"That is very nice," said Dotty; "people don"t read to me much."
"No, of course not, because you can see. People are kinder to blind children--didn"t you know it? I"m glad I had my eyes put out, for if they hadn"t been put out I shouldn"t have come here."
"Where should you have gone, then?"
"I shouldn"t have gone anywhere; I should just have staid at home."
"Don"t you like to stay at home?"
Emily shrugged her shoulders.
"My paw killed a man."
"I don"t know what a paw is," said Dotty.
"O, Flyaway Clifford, you"ve broken a teapot!"
"No matter," said Emily, kindly; ""twas made out of a gone-to-seed poppy.
Don"t you know what a paw is? Why, it"s a _paw_"
In spite of this clear explanation, Dotty did not understand any better than before.
"It was the man that married my maw, only maw died, and then there was another one, and she scolded and shook me."
"O, I s"pose you mean a father "n mother; now I know."
"I want to tell you," pursued Emily, who loved to talk to strangers.
"She didn"t care if I was blind; she used to shake me just the same. And my paw had fits."
The other children, who had often heard this story, did not listen to it with great interest, but went on with their various plays, leaving Emily and Dotty standing together before Emily"s baby-house.
"Yes, my paw had fits. I knew when they were coming, for I could smell them in the bottle."
"Fits in a bottle!"
"It was something he drank out of a bottle that made him have the fits.
You are so little that you couldn"t understand. And then he was cross.
And once he killed a man; but he didn"t go to."
"Then he was guilty," said Dotty, in a solemn tone. "Did they take him to the court-house and hang him?"
"No, of course they wouldn"t hang _him_. They said it was the third degree, and they sent him to the State"s Prison."
"O, is your father in the State"s Prison?"
Dotty thought if her father were in such, a dreadful place, and she herself were blind, she should not wish to live; but here was Emily looking just as happy as anybody else. Indeed, the little girl was rather proud of being the daughter of such a wicked man. She had been pitied so much for her misfortunes that she had come to regard herself as quite a remarkable person. She could not see the horror in Dotty"s face, but she could detect it in her voice; so she went on, well satisfied.
"There isn"t any other little girl in this school that has had so much trouble as I have. A lady told me it was because G.o.d wanted to make a good woman of me, and that was why it was."
"Does it make people good to have trouble?" asked Dotty, trying to remember what dreadful trials had happened to herself. "Our house was burnt all up, and I felt dreadfully. I lost a tea-set, too, with gold rims. I didn"t know I was any better for that."
"O, you see, it isn"t very awful to have a house burnt up," said Emily; "not half so awful as it is to have your eyes put out."
"But then, Emily, I"ve been sick, and had the sore throat, and almost drowned--and--and--the whooping-cough when I was a baby."
"What is your name?" asked Emily; "and how old are you?"
"My name is Alice Parlin, and I am six years old."
"Why, I am nine; and see--your head! only comes under my chin."
"Of course it doesn"t," replied Dotty, with some spirit. "I wouldn"t be as tall as you are for anything, and me only six--going on seven."
"I suppose your paw is rich, and good to you, and you have everything you want--don"t you, Alice?"