Read Ebook: Scientific Sprague by Lynde Francis Shrader E Roscoe Edwin Roscoe Illustrator

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Ebook has 798 lines and 86867 words, and 16 pages

CHAPTER

DOTTY DIMPLE'S FLYAWAY.

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."

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."

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?"

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 apron up to her face.

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.

"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."

"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 dink milk, and that girl lost my pills.

"I like Dr. Gray ever so much!

"Mis' Gray gave me the kitty to play with. I bundled it all up in my dress, 'cause I didn't want the cat to get it. When I went home I gave it to the cat.

"Now 'bout I pumped full a pail full o' water.

"That's all--I feel sleepy.

"From

"DOTTY DIMPWILL TO FLYWER."

This letter "went into a mist," and so did the next performance, which you will read in the following chapter.

RUNNING AWAY TO CHURCH.

The little Parlins came the next week. One Sunday morning Dotty Dimple stood before the glass, putting on her hat for church. Katie came and peeped in with her, opening her small mouth and drawing her lips over her teeth, as her grandfather did when he shaved.

"See, Flyaway, you haven't any dimples at all!" said Dotty, primping a little. "Your hair isn't smooth and curly like mine; it sticks up all over your head, like a little fan."

"O, my shole!" sighed Flyaway, scowling at herself. She did not know how lovely she was, nor how

"The light of the heaven she came from Still lingered and gleamed in her hair."

"I wisht 'twouldn't get out," said she.

"O, unwetted, and un-comb-bid, and un-parted."

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