Dotty Dimples Flyaway | Page 2

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.
The sink was so high that Katie could not get out of it alone,--"course indeed she couldn't."
"It most makes me 'fraid," said she to herself: "Ruthie's a big woman, I's a little woman. When I's the biggest I'll put Ruthie in my sink."
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.
"O, how it makes me shivvle!" said she.
"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."
"I'm isn't little naughty goorl," thought Katie, indignantly; "but Ruthie's naughty goorl, and Hollis velly naughty goorl."
"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 see a hop-toad. He hopped. Jennie took her up in his dress.
"And 'bout we put hop-toad in wash-dish. He put his foots out, stwetched, honest! He was a slippy fellow. First thing we knowed it, he hopped on to her dress. Isn't that funny?
"Now 'bout the chickens; they