Little Prudys Dotty Dimple | Page 3

dropping out. Then she grew to be a toddling child; and while she was learning to walk, Prudy was beginning to sew patchwork. For time does not stand still; it passed, minute by minute, over the heads of Susy, Prudy, and Alice, as well as all the rest of the world. And soon it brought an end to Alice's babyhood.
CHAPTER II.
THE BONE MAN.
In spite of all Mr. Parlin had said against it, his little daughter was called by various pet names,--such as Midge, and Ladybird, and Forget-me-not. Very few were the people who seemed to remember that her name was Alice.
She had a pair of busy dimples, which were a constant delight to her sisters.
"They twinkle, twinkle like little stars, only they don't shine," cried Prudy.
"Why," said Susy, "it's just as if her cheeks were made of water, and we were skipping pebbles in 'em."
And because of these tiny whirl pools, the child was usually called Dotty Dimple. From the time she could stand on her own little feet, she was a queen of a baby, and carried her small head very high. If she chanced to fall over a chair she seldom shed a tear, but thought the chair had treated her shamefully, and ought to be shut up in the closet. She never liked to have any one kiss her little bruises and pity her. It gave great offence if any one said, "Poor Alice!" She seemed to grow half a head taller in a minute, and looked as if she would say, "Needn't make a baby o' me!"
Not that she really said so. Talking was a thing she did not often attempt, though she sang a great deal, with a voice as clear as a flute. Prudy mourned because her tongue "did not grow fast enough." But where was the need of speech? If she fancied she would like to be tossed to the "sky of the room," she had only to pat her father's arm, and point upward, and the next minute she was flying to the ceiling, in high glee, and catching her breath. If she wished to go walking, it was enough to point to the door, and then to her hat. Her little forefinger was as good as most people's tongues, and served as a tolerably good guide-post, for it pointed the way she meant to go herself, and the way she wished others to go.
One day, while Mrs. Parlin was making currant jelly, she allowed Prudy to stay in the kitchen, and see her strain the beautiful crimson juice. But as for Alice, she had been found pounding eggs in a mortar, and must be taken away. She was placed in care of Susy, who led her out upon the piazza, where she could watch the people passing by. "_Pedadder!_" cried Alice, showing her dimples. "Yes, _piazza_; so it is," said careless Susy, beginning to read a fairy story, and soon forgetting her quiet little charge.
Looking up at last, there was nothing to be seen of Alice. She could not have entered the house, for the front-door knob was above her reach.
Susy ran out upon the pavement, and looked up and down the street. Which way to go she could not tell, but started down street at full speed. "O, I'm sure I ought to be going up street," gasped she; "and if I was, I shouldn't think that was right either. Wish I knew which way I should expect Dotty to go, and then I'd know she'd gone just the other way."
After flitting hither and thither for some time, Susy ran home to give the alarm. Without stopping to remove the jelly from the stove, Mrs. Parlin, Norah, and Prudy ran out of doors, and taking different directions, started in search of the missing child.
On High Street Prudy met a soap-man, just reentering his wagon at some one's door.
"O, have you seen my little sister?" cried Prudy, pressing her hand against her heart.
"Your little sister? And who may that be?" said the soap-man, in a deep whisper; for he had such a severe cold on his lungs that for six months he had not spoken a loud word.
"O, her name is Alice Wheelbarrow Parlin, sir," whispered Prudy, in reply; "and she had on a pink dress, and her hair curls down her neck, and she has the brightest eyes, and two years and a half of age, sir. O, where do you s'pose she's gone to?"
In her concern for Dotty, Prudy had forgotten her usual fear of strangers.
"I'm sorry you've lost your sister," whispered the soap-man; "but as you seem to be pretty well tired out, suppose you jump into my cart and ride with me."
Prudy wondered why the man still kept whispering, but presumed there was some reason why the