"Selfish little girl!" said grandma, looking keenly at Dotty's troubled face. "You would expect Prudy to return every cent, if she were in your place."
"Yes; and when I explain your duty to you, you don't understand me. You would understand if you were not so selfish!"
"Don't come to me again, and complain of Jennie Vance."
Dotty could not meet her grandmother's searching gaze: it seemed to cut into her heart like a sharp blade.
"Am I as bad as Jennie Vance? Yes, just us bad; and grandma knows it. But then," said she aloud, though very faintly, "Prudy needn't have put it in my porte-monnaie; she might have known I'd lose it."
"Dotty, I am not going to say any more about it now. You may think it over to-day, and decide for yourself whether you are following the Golden Rule. Or, if you choose, you may wait and talk with your mother."
"Yes 'm." Dotty was glad to escape into the kitchen.
Flyaway sat on the kitchen floor, feeding Dinah with a roasted apple. As often as Dinah refused a teaspoonful, she put it into her own mouth, saying, with a wise nod, "My child, she's sick; hasn't any _appletite_."
Out of doors it was raining heartily. It seemed as if the "upper deep" was tipping over, and pouring itself into the lap of the earth.
"O, Ruthie," sighed Dotty Dimple, "my mother won't come while it's such weather. Do you s'pose 'twill ever clear off?" [Blank Page]
"Yes, I do," replied Ruth, trimming a pie briskly; "it only began last night at five."
"Why, Ruthie Dillon! it began three weeks ago, by the clock! Don't you know that day I couldn't go visiting? Only sometimes it stops a while, and then begins again."
"If you're going to have the blues, Miss Dotty, I'll thank you kindly just to take yourself out of this kitchen. Polly Whiting is here, and she is as much as a body can endures in this dull weather."
"It's pitiful 'bout the rain, Dotty; but you mustn't scold when God sended it," said Flyaway, dropping the feeble Dinah, and pursuing her cousin round the room with a pin. In a minute they were both laughing gayly, till Flyaway caught herself on her little rocking-chair, and "got a _torn_ in her apron." That ended the sport.
"What shall I do to make myself happy?" said Dotty, musingly; for she wished to put off all thought of Prudy's money. "I should like to roll out some thimble-cookies, but Ruthie hasn't much patience this morning. I never dare do things when her lips are squeezed together so."