Dotty Dimple"s Flyaway.
by Sophie May.
CHAPTER I.
BEGINNING TO REMEMBER.
Katie Clifford was a very bright child. She almost knew enough to keep out of fire and water, but not quite. She looked like other little girls, only so wise,--O, so very wise!--that you couldn"t tell her any news about the earth, or the sun, moon, and stars, for she knew all about it "byfore."
Her hair was soft and flying like corn-silk, and when the wind took it you would think it meant to blow it off like a dandelion top. She was so light and breezy, and so little for her age, that her father said "they must put a cent in her pocket to keep her from flying away;" so, after that, the family began to call her _Flyaway_. She thought it was her name, and that when people said "Katie," it was a gentle way they had of scolding.
Everybody petted her. Her brother Horace put his heart right under her feet, and she danced over it. Her "uncle Eddard" said "she drove round the world in a little chariot, and all her friends were harnessed to it, only they didn"t know it."
Her shoulders were very little, but they bore a crushing weight of care. From the time she began to talk, she took upon herself the burden of the whole family. When Mrs. Clifford had a headache, Flyaway was so full of pity that nothing could keep her from climbing upon the sufferer, stroking her face, and saying, "O, my _dee_ mamma," or perhaps breaking the camphor bottle over her nose.
She sat at table in a high chair beside her father, and might have learned good manners if it had not been for the care she felt of Horace. She could scarcely attend to her own little knife and fork, because she was so busy watching her brother. She wished to see for herself that he was sitting straight, and not leaning his elbows on the table. If he made any mistake she cried, "Hollis!" in a tone as sweet as a wind-harp, though she meant it to be terribly severe, adding to the effect by shaking the corn-silk on her head in high displeasure. If she could correct him she thought she had done as much good in the family as if she had behaved well herself. He received all rebukes very meekly, with a "Thank you, little Topknot. What would be done here without you to preserve order?"
Flyaway could remember as far back as the beginning of the world,--that is to say, she could remember when _her_ world began.
It is strange to think of, but the first thing she really knew for a certainty, she was standing in a yellow chair, in her grandmother Parlin"s kitchen! It was as if she had always been asleep till that minute. People did say she had once been a baby, but she could not recollect that, "it was so MANY years ago."
Her mind, you see, had always been as soft as a bag of feathers; and nothing that she did, or that any one else did, made much impression.
But now something remarkable was taking place, and she would never forget it.
It was this: she was grinding coffee. How prettily it pattered down on the floor! What did it look like? O, like snuff, that people sneezed with. This was housework. Next thing they would ask her to wash dishes and set the table. She would grow larger and larger, and Gracie would grow littler and littler; and O, how nice it would be when she could do all the work, and Gracie had to sit in mamma"s lap and be rocked!
"Flywer"ll do some help," said she. "Flywer"ll take "are of g"amma"s things."
While she stood musing thus, with a dreamy smile, and turning the handle of the mill as fast as it would go round, somebody sprang at her very unexpectedly. It was Ruth, the kitchen-girl. She seized Katie by the shoulders, carried her through the air, and set her on her feet in the sink.
"There, little Mischief," said she, "you"ll stay there one while!
We"ll see if we can"t put a stop to this coffee-grinding! Why, you"re enough to wear out the patience of Job!"
Katie had often heard about Job; she supposed it was something dreadful, like a lion, or a whale. She looked up at Ruth, and saw her black eyes flashing and the rosy color trembling in her cheeks. Cruel Ruth! She did not know Katie was her best friend, working and helping get dinner as fast as she could. "Ruthie," sobbed she, "you didn"t ask please."
"Well, well, child, I"m in a hurry; and when you set things to flying, you"re enough to wear out the patience of Job."
Job again.
"You"ve said so two times, Ruthie! Now I don"t like you tall, tenny rate."
This was as harsh language as Katie dared use; but she frowned fearfully, and a tuft of hair, rising from her head like a waterspout, made her look so fierce that Ruth seemed to be frightened, and ran away with her ap.r.o.n up to her face.
The sink was so high that Katie could not get out of it alone,--"course _indeed_ she couldn"t."
"It most makes me "fraid," said she to herself: "Ruthie"s a big woman, I"s a little woman. When I"s the biggest I"ll put Ruthie in _my_ sink."
Very much comforted by this resolve, she dried her eyes and began to look about her for more housework. "Let"s me see; I"ll pump a bushel o" water."
There was a pail in the sink; so, what should she do but jump into that, and then jerk the pump-handle up and down, till a fine stream poured out and sprinkled her all over!
"Sing a song, O sink-spout," sang she, catching her breath: but presently she began to feel cold.
"O, how it makes me _shivvle_!" said she.
"Katie!" called out a voice.
"Here me are!" gurgled the little one, her mouth under the pump-nose.
When Horace came in she was standing in water up to the tops of her long white stockings. He took her out, wrung her a little, and set her on a shelf in the pantry to dry.
"Oho!" said she, shaking her wet plumage, like a duckling; "what for you look that way to me? I didn"t do nuffin,--not the leastest nuffin!
The water kep" a comin" and a comin"."
"Yes, you little naughty girl, and you kept pumping and pumping."
"I"m isn"t little naughty goorl," thought Katie, indignantly; "but Ruthie"s naughty goorl, and Hollis _velly_ naughty goorl."
"O, here you are, you little Hop-o"-my-thumb," said Mrs. Clifford, coming into the pantry; "a baby with a cough in her throat and pills in her pocket musn"t get wet."
Flyaway thrust her hand into her wet pocket to make sure the wee vial of white dots was still there.
"I fished her out of a pail of water," said Horace; "to-morrow I shall find her in a bird"s nest."
Mrs. Clifford sent for some fresh stockings and shoes. Her baby-daughter was so often falling into mischief that she thought very little about it. She did not know this was a remarkable occasion, and the baby had to-day begun to remember. She did not know that if Flyaway should live to be an old lady, she would sometimes say to her grandchildren,--
"The very first thing I have any recollection of, dears, is grinding coffee in your great-grandmamma"s kitchen at Willowbrook. The girl, Ruth Dillon, took me up by the shoulders, carried me through the air, and set me in the sink, and then I pumped water over myself."
This is about the way little Flyaway would be likely to talk, sixty years from now, adding, as she polished her spectacles,--
"And after that, children, things went into a mist, and I don"t remember anything else that happened for some time."
Why was it that things "went into a mist"? Why didn"t she keep on remembering every day? I don"t know.
But the next thing that really did happen to Miss Thistleblow Flyaway, though she went right off and forgot it, was this: She persuaded her mother to write a letter for her to "Dotty Dimpwill." As it was her first letter, I will copy it.
"MY DEAR DOTTY DIMPWILL first, then MY PRUDY:
"I"m going to say that I d.i.n.k milk, and that girl lost my pills.
"I see a hop-toad. He hopped. Jennie took _her_ up in _his_ dress.
"And "bout we put hop-toad in wash-dish. He put his foots out, _stwetched_, honest! He was a slippy fellow. First thing we knowed it, he hopped on to her dress. Isn"t that funny?
"Now "bout the chickens; they are trottin" round on the gra.s.s: they didn"t be dead. _We_ haven"t got any only but dead ones; but Mis" Gray has.
"I like Dr. Gray ever so much!