So he went to work. Dot wanted to help, and brought him useless sticks, while she carried off his hammer and lost his nails. But when she looked up at him with the sweetest little face in the world, and said, "Ain't Dotty 'mart? Dotty help 'ou," he could not scold her.
The dinner was rather quiet. None of the stray youngsters made their appearance. Afterward Florence dressed herself, and went to see Netty Bigelow, her dearest school-friend, and imparted to her that she was going to Seabury next Monday, to stay a month with a very elegant lady, and that she would live at a hotel. Then she described her ride to Salem, and the dinner.
"Oh, how nice it must have been!" said Netty. "You are the luckiest girl I ever did know, Florence Kenneth."
"I just wish I was as rich as Mrs. Osgood. It seems to me that poor people cannot be very happy."
"I don't know," Netty returned thoughtfully. "The Graysons do not seem very happy."
"But I never saw such mean, disagreeable girls; and they are not dressed a bit pretty. If there's any thing in school they always want their share, but they never treat."
"And we are poor," continued Netty; "but I'm sure we are happy."
Florence felt that her friend could hardly understand the degree of happiness that she meant. She was rather out-growing her youthful companions.
About mid-afternoon Hal took a walk over to the store. The old rusty cannon of Revolutionary memory had been fired on the green, the speeches made, and the small crowd dispersed. Nearly everybody had gone to Salem; but a few old stagers still congregated at the store, it being general head-quarters.
Hal picked Charlie out of a group of children, in a very dilapidated condition. Her once clean dress was soiled, torn, and burned; her hands gave the strongest evidence that dust entered largely into the composition of small people; and her face was variegated by perspiration and dabs from these same unlucky hands.