"Aunt Louise said I might make a bag, Gracie--"
"Seems to me aunt Louise lets you do everything; I shouldn"t want you to spoil that ribbon."
"They shan"t bother my little Topknot," said Horace, with a sweep of his thumb. "She is going to have all my clothes to make bags of, when she grows up."
Flyaway, who knew she had a good right to the ribbon, pressed her eyelids together slowly.
"If I"s Gracie," said she, severely, "I"d make ap.r.o.ns; if I"s mamma I"d sew dresses; if I"s Flywer, I"d do just"s I want to."
And then she went on sewing; without any thimble.
"Girls, have you guessed yet why a wheelbarrow is like a potato?"
"No, Horace; why is it?"
"O, I was in hopes you could tell. I don"t know, I am sure. It is as much as I can do to make up a conundrum, without finding out the answer."
The children laughed at this, but none of them so loud as Flyaway, who thought her brother the wisest, wittiest, and n.o.blest specimen of boyhood that ever lived.
"How our needles do fly!" said Dotty, merrily.
She was a neat and swift little seamstress, even superior to Prudy.
"See," said Flyaway to Horace; "I work faster "n my mamma, "cause she"s got a big dress to work on: of course she can"t sew so quick as I can on a little bag."
"Prudy can sew better and faster than I can," said Dotty, with a sudden gush of humility.
"Why, Dotty Dimple, I don"t think so," returned Prudy, quite surprised.
"Neither do I," said aunt Maria; "I am afraid our little Dotty is hardly sincere."
Dotty"s head drooped a little. "I know it, auntie; I do sew the nicest; but I was afraid it wouldn"t be polite if I told it just as it was, and Prudy so good to me, too."
"If she is good, is that any reason why you should tell her a wrong story?" remarked the plain-spoken Susy, giving a twitch to her tatting-thread.
"Children," said Mrs. Clifford, laughing, "do you remember those hideous green goggles I wore a year ago?"
"O, yes "m," replied Grace; "they made your eyes stick out so! Why, you looked like a frog, ma", more than anything else."
"Well, a certain lady of my acquaintance was so polite as to tell me my goggles were very becoming."
"O, ma, who could it have been?"
"I prefer not to give you her name. I appreciated her kind wish to please me, but I could not think her sincere."
"O, Susy," said Grace, "if you could have seen those goggles! A little basket for each eye, made of green wire, like a fly cover! Ma, did you ever believe a word that lady said afterwards?"
"Flatterers are not generally to be trusted," replied Mrs. Clifford.
"Flyaway, that is the fourth needle you have lost."
Here was another lesson for Dotty"s memory-shelf. "I must not say things that are not true, just to be polite. It is flattering and wicked; and besides that, people always know better."
It was a quiet, busy, cheerful day. Dotty forgot to complain of the weather. Just before supper Flyaway jumped down from her grandpapa"s knee, where she had been talking to him through his "conversation-tube,"
and ran to the window.
"Why, "tisn"t raining," cried she; "true"s I"m walking on this floor "tisn"t raining!"
Dotty clapped her hands, and watched the sun coming out like pure gold, and turning the dark clouds into silver.
"We were patient and willing for it to rain," said she; "but of course that wasn"t why it cleared off."
And it wasn"t why Flyaway lost her thumb-nail, either. She lost that--or half of it--in the crack of the door. The poor little thumb was very painful, and had to be put in a cot.
"It wearies me," said Flyaway; "it makes me afraid I shan"t ever have a nail on there again."
Her mother a.s.sured her she would. The same G.o.d who calls up the little blades of gra.s.s out of the ground could make a finger-nail grow.
"Will He?" said Flyaway, smiling through tears; "but "haps He"ll forget how it looks. Musn"t I save a piece of my nail, mamma, and lay it up on the shelf, so He can see it, and make the other one like it?"
Mrs. Clifford put the nail in her jewel-box, and I dare say it may be there to this day.
Just as Flyaway, in her nightie, was having a frolic with Grace, there was a sound of wheels. The stage, which Horace called the "Oriole"
because it had a yellow breast, was rolling into the yard.
"It"s my mother--my mother," cried the three Parlins together.
Yes, and who was that little girl getting down just after her? Her hat covered her eyes. "It isn"t Tate Penny!" Why, to be sure it was! There was her dimpled chin; and if that wasn"t proof enough, there was the wart on her thumb!
To think such a glorious thing as this could happen to Dotty! and she not the best girl in the world either! A visit from her bosom friend!
"Aunt "Ria, do you understand? Aunt Louise? Gracie? This is _Tate Penny_!"
"Who asked her to come? How did she happen to be with mamma, the same day, in the same cars?"
Well, grandma Parlin invited her to come. "When one lives in an India-rubber house," she said, "a few people more or less make no difference at all. She wished Dotty"s "nipperkin" of happiness to be full for once."
And it was: it ran over. There were joyful days for the next fortnight. I could never draw the picture of them with my pen, even if I had the paper left to put it on. They kept house under the trees; they baked their food in a brick oven Horace made; they gave a party; they had boat rides; they had swings; they never went into the house unless it rained; they were never cross to one another, or rude to Jennie Vance; it was like living in fairy-land.
It was a glorious summer. I almost wish it had not come to an end; though, in that case, I suppose I should never have stopped telling about it. By and by vacation was over, and Tate went off in the same stage with the Parlins. You could never guess what she and Dotty each put so carefully into their bosoms, to keep "forever." It was a splinter of the dear old barn where they had had such good times jumping!
Three weeks afterwards the "Oriole" drove up to grandpapa Parlin"s again, and this time for the Cliffords. Flyaway danced into it like a piece of thistle-down. Everybody threw good-by kisses, and the stage rattled away.
And after that, dears, as Flyaway will say to her grandchildren, "things went into a mist." And this is all I have to tell you about the Parlins, the Cliffords, and the Willowbrook home.
THE END.