FULL NIPPERKIN.
Prudy scorned to take the ten cents. "Did you think your 'middle-aged'
sister would do such a thing, when she has more money than you have,
Dotty Dimple? If you're only sorry, that's all I ask. I didn't like to
have you laugh, as if you didn't care."
"But, Prudy, I want to be honest."
"And so you have been, dear child," said grandma Parlin, with an
approving smile. "If Prudy chooses now to give you the money, receive
it as a present, and say, 'Thank you.'"
"O, thank you, Prudy Parlin, over and over, and up to the moon," cried
Dotty, throwing her arms around her kind sister's neck. "I'll never
lose anything of yours again; no, never, never!"
This lesson was laid away on a shelf in Dotty's memory. Close beside
it was another lesson, still more wholesome.
"Dotty Dimple isn't the best girl that ever lived. She had to be
talked to and talked to, before she was willing to do right. She isn't
any better than Jennie Vance, after all. Why did she pray that naughty
prayer, just to make Jennie feel bad? God must have thought it was
very strange!"
Grandma saw that Dotty's "blues" were dissolving like a morning mist;
still she knew the child was in need of patchwork, and told her so.
"Let us all take our work," said she, "and sit together in the
nursery, so we may forget the dull weather."
Grace brought her piqué apron down stairs to make, Susy her tatting,
Prudy a handkerchief, Dotty a square of patchwork, while Flyaway
danced about for a needle and thread.
"What a happy group!" said Mrs. Clifford, looking up from her sewing.
She had forgotten Polly Whiting, who was mournfully toeing off a sock
for Horace, while he sat on the floor, at her feet, mending her
double-covered basket.
"Why, Katie, darling," said Grace, "what are you doing with that
beautiful ribbon?"
"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 aprons; 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 noblest 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 assured her she would. The same God who calls up the little
blades of grass 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.
* * * * *
DOTTY DIMPLE STORIES.
To be completed in six vols. Handsomely Illustrated.
Each vol., 75 cts.
1. DOTTY DIMPLE AT HER GRANDMOTHER'S.
2. DOTTY DIMPLE AT HOME.
3. DOTTY DIMPLE OUT WEST.
4. DOTTY DIMPLE AT PLAY.
5. DOTTY DIMPLE AT SCHOOL.
6. DOTTY DIMPLE'S FLYAWAY.
BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
LITTLE PRUDY STORIES.
Now complete. Six vols. 24mo. Handsomely Illustrated.
In a neat box. Per vol., 75 cts. Comprising
LITTLE PRUDY.
LITTLE PRUDY'S SISTER SUSIE.
LITTLE PRUDY'S CAPTAIN HORACE.
LITTLE PRUDY'S COUSIN GRACE.
LITTLE PRUDY'S STORY BOOK.
LITTLE PRUDY'S DOTTY DIMPLE.