"WHEELBARROWING."
"The wickedest girl in this town!" Jennie's eyes flashed in the dark
like a couple of fireflies. At first she was too angry to speak; and
when words did come, they were too weak. She wanted words that were so
strong, and bitter, and fierce, that they would make Dotty quail. But
all she could say was,--
"O, dreadful good you are, Miss Parlin! Good's the minister! Ah! guess
I'll get out and sleep on the floor!"
Dotty made no reply, but rolled over to the front of the bed, and
Jennie pushed herself to the back of it. There the little creatures
lay in silence, each on an edge of the bedstead, and a whole mattress
between. Sleep did not come at once.
"She's left that money on the floor," thought Dotty; "what if a mouse
should creep down the chimney, and gnaw it all up? But she must take
care of it herself. _I_ shan't!"
And Jennie thought, wrathfully, "Dotty says such long prayers she
can't stop to pick up that scrip! If she expects me to get out of bed,
she's made a mistake; I won't touch her old money."
About nine o'clock grandma Parlin came quietly into the room with a
lamp. A smile crept round the corners of her mouth, as she saw the
little girls sleeping so widely apart, their faces turned away from
each other.
"How is this?" said she, as the two bills caught her eye. "Of all the
foolish children! Dropping money about the room like waste paper!"
The light awoke Jennie, who had only just fallen asleep. "Now is the
time," said she to herself; and without waiting for a second thought,
which would have been a worse one, she sprang out of bed, and caught
Mrs. Parlin by the skirts.
"That money is yours, Mrs. Parlin," said she, bravely. "Yours; I found
it in the rag-bag. Something naughty came into me this morning, and
made me want to keep it; but I'm ever so sorry, and never'll do it
again. Will you forgive me?"
Then grandma Parlin seated herself in a rocking-chair, took Jennie
right into her lap, and talked to her a long while in the sweetest
way. Jennie curled her head into the good woman's neck, and sobbed
out all her wretchedness.
"She knew she was real bad, and people didn't like to have her play
with their little girls, and Dotty Dimple thought she was awful; but
_was_ she the wickedest girl in this town?"
"No; O, no!"
"Wasn't Dotty some bad, too?"
"Yes, Dotty often did wrong."
Then Jenny wept afresh.
"She knew she _was_ worse than Dotty, though. She wished,--O, dear, as
true as she lived,--she wished she was dead and buried, and drowned in
the Red Sea, and the grass over her grave, and shut up in jail, and
everything else."
Then Mrs. Parlin soothed her with kind words, but told the truth with
every one.
"No 'm," Jennie said; "it wasn't right to take fruit-cake without
leave, or tell wrong stories either; she wouldn't any more. Yes'm, she
would try to be good--she never had tried much.--Yes 'm, she would ask
God to help her. Should you suppose He would do it?
"Yes 'm, she would ask Him not to let her have much temptation. She
did believe she would rather be a good girl--a real good girl, like
Prudy, _not like Dotty_!--than to have a velvet dress with spangles
all over it."
All this while Dotty did not waken. In the morning she was surprised
to see her little bedfellow looking so cheerful.
"I've told your grandmother all about it," said Jennie with a smile.
"I knew I did wrong, but I don't believe I should have meant to if you
hadn't acted so your _own_ self--now that's a fact."
"You haven't seen my grandmother," returned Dotty, not noticing the
last clause of her friend's remark. "You dreamed it."
"No, she came in here and forgave me. She's the best woman in this
world. What do you think she said about you, Dotty Dimple? She said
there were other little girls full as good as you are. There!"
"O!"
"Said you 'often did wrong,' that's _just_ what," added Jennie,
correcting herself, and making sure of the "white truth."
Step by step Dotty came down from the mountain-top, and, before
breakfast was ready, had led her visitor through the morning dew to
the playhouse under the trees, chatting all the way as if nothing had
happened.
It proved that the money belonged to Abner. He had missed it several
weeks before, and ever since that had been suspecting old Daniel
McQuilken, a day laborer, of stealing it.
"I'm ashamed of it now," said Abner to Ruth, "though I didn't tell
anybody but you. I wish you'd mix a pitcher of sweetened water, and
let me take it out to the field to old Daniel. I feel as if I wanted
to make it up to him some way."
Ruth laughed; and when Abner came into the house at ten o'clock, she
had a pitcher of molasses and water ready for him, also a plate of
cherry turnovers. Flyaway insisted upon toddling over the ground with
one of the turnovers in her apron.
"Man," said she, when they reached the field, and she saw the Irishman
with his funny red and white hair, "what's your name, man?"
He wiped his face with his checked shirt-sleeve, and took a turnover
from her hand, bowing very low as he did so.
"Thank ee, my little lady; sense you're plazed to ask me,--my name's
Dannul."
"O, are you?" said Flyaway, looking up in surprise at the large and
oddly-dressed stranger. "Are you Daniel? My mamma's just been reading
about you. You was in the lions' den--_wasn't_ you, Daniel?"
Mr. McQuilken smiled at bareheaded, flossy-haired little Katie, and
replied, with a wink at Abner,--
"Fath, little lady, and I suppose I'm that same Dannul; but 'twas so
long ago I've clane forgot aboot it entirely."
"O, did you? Well, you _was_ in the lions' den, Daniel, but they
didn't bite you, you know, 'cause you prayed so long and so loud,
with your winners up; and then God wouldn't let 'em bite."
Old Daniel laid both his huge hands on Katie's head.
"Swate little chirrub," said he, "don't she look saintish?"
Katie moved away; she did not like to have her hair pulled, and Daniel
was unconsciously drawing it through the big cracks in his fingers, as
if he was waxing silk.
"I guess I'll go home now," said she, with a timid glance at the man
whom the lions did not bite; "they'll be spectin' me."
Abner and Daniel both watched the tiny figure across the fields till
Ruth came out to meet it, and it fluttered into the east door of the
house.
"There, she's safe," said Abner; "she needs as much looking after as
a young turkey."
"She runs like a little sperrit, bliss her swate eyes," said Daniel.
"I had one as pooty as her, but she's at Mary's fate, Hivven rist her
sowl!"
The moment Flyaway reached the house, she rushed into the parlor to
tell her mother the news.
"The man you readed about in the book, mamma, he's out there! Daniel,
that the lions didn't bite, mamma, 'cause he prayed so long and so
loud with his winners up; he's out there--got a hat on."
"O, no, my child; it is thousands of years since Daniel was in the
lions' den; he died long and long ago."
"But he said he did, mamma; he told me so. I _fought_ he was dead,
mamma, but he said he wasn't."
Mrs. Clifford shook her head. "I dare say his name is Daniel, but he
was never in a lion's den."
Flyaway opened and closed her eyes in the slowest and most impressive
manner. "Mamma," said she, solemnly, "does--folks--tell--lies?"
It was an entirely now idea to the innocent child: it stamped itself upon
her mind like a motto on warm sealing-wax, "Folks--does--tell--lies."
Mrs. Clifford was sorry to see the look of distrust on the young face.
"Listen to me, little Flyaway. I think the man was in sport; he was
only playing with you, as Horace does sometimes, when he calls himself
your horse."
Flyaway said no more, but she pressed her eyelids together again, and
felt that she had been trifled with. Half an hour afterwards Prudy
heard her repeating, slowly, to herself, "Folks--does--tell--lies."
"Why, here she is," called Dotty from the piazza; "come, Fly; we're
going wheel-barrowing."
"Wait a minute, cousin Dotty," said Mrs. Clifford; "Flyaway must put
on a clean frock; she is not coming home with you, but you are to
leave her at aunt Martha's. I shall meet her there at dinner time."
"O, mamma, may I? I love you a hundred rooms full. Let me go bring my
_buttoner bootner_ quick's a minute."
Flyaway was not long in getting ready. She was never long about
anything.
"You said we might have all the money, we three--didn't you, grandma?"
asked Dotty again, at the last moment, thinking how glad she was
Jennie had gone home, and would not claim a share.
"Yes," replied patient grandma for the fifth time; "you may do
anything you like with it, except to buy colored candy."
As they were trundling the wheelbarrow out of the yard, Horace came up
from the garden.
"Prudy," said he, with rather a shame-faced glance at his favorite
cousin, "you girls will cut a pretty figure, parading through the
streets like a gang of pedlers. Come, let me be the driver."
"O, we thought you couldn't leave your flower-beds, sir," replied
Prudy, sweeping a courtesy.
"Well, the weeds _are_ pretty tough, ma'am; roots 'way down in China,
and the Emperor objects to parting with 'em; but--"
"Poh! we don't need any boys," cried the self-sustained Miss Dimple;
"if your hands are too soft, Prudy, you mustn't push. Wait and see
what Dotty Dimple can do."
"O, then, if you spurn me and my offer, good by. I suppose my little
Topknot goes for _surplusage_," said Horace, who liked now and then to
puzzle Dotty with a new word. He meant that Flyaway was of no use, but
rather in the way.
"No, she needn't do any such thing," returned Dotty. "Jump in, Fly,
and sit on the bag." And off moved the gay little party, "the
middle-aged sister" laughing so she could hardly push, Flyaway dancing
up and down on the rag-bag, like a humming-bird balancing itself on a
twig; Grace and Susy looking down from the "green chamber" window, and
saying to each other, with wounded family pride, "_Should_ you think
grandma would allow it?" Out in the street the young rag-merchants
were greeted by a cow lowing dismally. Flyaway, in her rustic
carriage, felt as secure as the fabled "kid on the roof of a house;"
so she called out, "Don't cry, old cow; I 'shamed o' you."
At this Prudy and Dotty laughed harder than ever.
"'Sh right up, old cow," said Flyaway, standing on her "tipsy-toes,"
and making a threatening gesture with her little arms; "'Sh right
up!--O, why don't that cow mind in a minute?"
In her earnestness the little girl pushed the bag to one side, and
Prudy and Dotty, shaking with laughter, tipped over the wheelbarrow.
No harm was done except to give Flyaway a dust-bath in her nice clean
frock. Just as they were struggling with the bag, to get it in again,
they were overtaken by a droll-looking equipage. It was a long house
on wheels, and instantly reminded Dotty of Noah's ark.
"O, a house a-ridin'! a house a-ridin'!" exclaimed Flyaway, gazing
after it with the greatest astonishment.
Dotty thought the world was going topsy-turvy. She looked at the trees
to see if they stood fast in the ground. But Prudy explained it as
soon as she could stop laughing.
"Only a photograph saloon," said she. "Didn't you ever see one before?
We don't have them in the city going round so, but things are
different in the country. Let's watch and see where it stops."
"O, dear me," said Dotty; "I shouldn't want to live in a house that
couldn't stand still! Stove tipping over, and the gingerbread falling
out of the oven! There, I declare!"
The look of wonder on Dotty's face was so amusing that Prudy was
obliged to hold on to her sides.
"There, look!" said she; "it has stopped down by the corner. Now the
man can bake his gingerbread if he wants to, and the stove won't tip
over. Jump in, Flyaway, and finish your ride."
"No-o," said Flyaway, wavering between her fear of the cow, some yards
ahead, and her fear of the rocking, unsteady wheelbarrow. "Guess I
won't get in no more, Prudy; it wearies me."
"Wearies you?"
"Yes: don't you know what 'wearies' means, Prudy? It means it makes me
a--a--little--scared!"
And in her "weariness" Flyaway nestled between her two cousins, and
kept fast hold of their skirts till the cow was safely passed and the
red store reached.
"Bravo!" exclaimed Mr. Bradley, the merchant, as he came out and
dragged the rag-bag into the store; "so you've taken the business into
your own hands, my little women? Ah, this is a progressive age! Walk
in--walk in."
Prudy blushed, Dotty smiled, and Flyaway took off her hat, as she
usually did when she did not know what else to do.
"Take some seats, young ladies," said Mr. Bradley, placing three
chairs in a row, and bowing as if to the most distinguished visitors.
Two or three men, who were lounging about the counter, looked on with
a smile. Dotty was very well satisfied, for she enjoyed attention; but
Prudy, who was older, and had a more delicate sense of propriety,
blushed and cast down her eyes. She had thought nothing of driving a
wheelbarrow through the street, but now, for the first time, a feeling
of mortification came over her. If Mr. Bradley would only keep quiet!
"A fine morning, my young friends! Rather warm, to be sure. And so you
have brought rags to sell? Would you like the money for them, or do
you think we can make a trade with some articles out of the store?"
"Grandma said we could have the money between us, we three," replied
Dotty, with refreshing frankness, "and buy anything we please except
red and yellow candy."
"I want a _music_," said Flyaway, in an eager whisper; "a music, and a
ollinge, and a pig."
"Hush!" said Prudy, for the man with a piece of court-plaster on his
cheek was certainly laughing.
Mr. Bradley took the bag into another room to weigh it. A boy was in
there, drawing molasses. "James," said Mr. Bradley, "run down cellar,
and bring up some beer for these young ladies."
There was a smile on James's face as he drove the plug into the
barrel. Prudy saw it through the open door, and it went to her heart.
The cream beer was excellent, but Prudy did not relish it. She and
Dotty had been whispering together.
"We will take two thirds of the rags in money, if you please," said
Prudy, in such a low tone that Mr. Bradley had to bend his ear to
hear.
"Because," added Dotty, who wished to have everything clearly
explained, "because we want to have our tin-types taken, sir. We saw
a saloon riding on wheels, and we thought we'd go there, and see if
the man wasn't ready to take pictures."
"And our little cousin may use her third, and buy something out of the
store, if you please," said the blushing Prudy.