Dotty Dimple at Play | Page 4

lovely little girl with curly hair; but her eyes were
closed, and Dotty wondered what made her talk of "seeing" a doll.
Emily took "Lilly Viola," and travelled all over her hat and dress and
kid boots with her fingers.
"Yes, Octavia," said she, "she is very pretty--ever so much prettier than
my Victoria Josephine."
Then both the little girls talked sweet nothings to their rag babies, just
like any other little girls.
"Is the dollies blind-eyed, too?" asked Katie, making a dash forward,
and peeping into the cloth face of a baby.
The little mamma, whose name was Octavia, smiled, and taking Katie
by the shoulders, began to touch her all over with her fingers.
"Dear little thing!" said she; "what soft hair!"
"Yes," replied Katie; "velly soft. Don't you wish, though, you could see
my new dress? It's got little blue yoses all over it."
[Illustration: DOTTY AND KATIE VISITING THE BLIND GIRLS.]

"I know your dress is pretty," said Octavia, gently, "and I know you are
pretty, too, your voice is so sweet."
"Well, I eat canny," said Katie, "and that makes my voice sweet. I'se
got 'most a hunnerd bushels o' canny to my house."
"Have you truly?" asked the children, gathering about Flyaway, and
kissing her.
"Yes, and I'se got a sweet place in my neck, too; but my papa's kissed it
all out o' me."
"Isn't she a darling?" said Octavia, with delight.
"Yes," answered Dotty, very glad to say a word to such remarkable
children as these; "yes, she is a darling; and she has on a white dress
with blue spots, and a hat trimmed with blue; and her hair is straw color.
They call her Flyaway, because she can't keep still a minute."
"Yes, I does; I keeps still two, free, five, all the minutes," cried Katie;
and to prove it, she flew across the yard, and began to pry into one of
the play-houses.
"She doesn't mean to be naughty; you must scuse her," spoke up Dotty,
very loud; for she still held unconsciously to the idea that blind people
must have dull ears. "She is a nice baby; but I s'pose you don't know
there are some play-houses in this yard, and she'll get into mischief if I
don't watch her."
"Why, all these play-houses are ours," said little curly-haired Emily;
"whose did you think they were?"
"Yours?" asked Dotty, in surprise; "can you play?"
Emily laughed merrily.
"Why not? Did you think we were sick?"
Dotty did not answer.
"I am Mrs. Holiday," added Emily; "that is, I generally am; but
sometimes I'm Jane. Didn't you ever read Rollo on the Atlantic?"
Dotty, who could only stammer over the First Reader at her mother's
knee, was obliged to confess that she had never made Rollo's
acquaintance.
"We have books read to us," said Emily. "In the work-hour we go into
the sitting-room, and there we sit with the bead-boxes in our laps,
making baskets, and then our teacher reads to us out of a book, or tells
us a story."
"That is very nice," said Dotty; "people don't read to me much."

"No, of course not, because you can see. People are kinder to blind
children--didn't you know it? I'm glad I had my eyes put out, for if they
hadn't been put out I shouldn't have come here."
"Where should you have gone, then?"
"I shouldn't have gone anywhere; I should just have staid at home."
"Don't you like to stay at home?"
Emily shrugged her shoulders.
"My paw killed a man."
"I don't know what a paw is," said Dotty.
"O, Flyaway Clifford, you've broken a teapot!"
"No matter," said Emily, kindly; "'twas made out of a gone-to-seed
poppy. Don't you know what a paw is? Why, it's a _paw_"
In spite of this clear explanation, Dotty did not understand any better
than before.
"It was the man that married my maw, only maw died, and then there
was another one, and she scolded and shook me."
"O, I s'pose you mean a father 'n mother; now I know."
"I want to tell you," pursued Emily, who loved to talk to strangers. "She
didn't care if I was blind; she used to shake me just the same. And my
paw had fits."
The other children, who had often heard this story, did not listen to it
with great interest, but went on with their various plays, leaving Emily
and Dotty standing together before Emily's baby-house.
"Yes, my paw had fits. I knew when they were coming, for I could
smell them in the bottle."
"Fits in a bottle!"
"It was something he drank out of a bottle that made him have the fits.
You are so little that you couldn't understand. And then he was cross.
And once