“It’s ’most bedtime, but I’ll tell you a story before you go to bed,” she heard Cassy say to her doll. “Listen, and it will give you something to think about while you are trying to go to sleep. Once there was a little girl ’bout as big as me, and she had a mother and a brother and she hadn’t any money at all, but they all wanted some, so her mother went to see a gentleman who knew where there was lots of railroad money, and he gave a whole lot of it to her mother ’cause her husband had been hurt in a railroad accident, and so the little girl had a whole window full of flowers and violets every day, and chicken sandwiches and apple pie, but she didn’t get a new doll, only a new silk dress for her old one—a blue silk dress just like the sky, and oh yes—they had a nice little house with morning-glories growing all over the porch, and the little girl’s mother didn’t have to make any more buttonholes or sew any more on the sewing-machine; she sat on a velvet chair and ate the chicken sandwiches and apple pie all day.”
At this point Mrs. Law laughed. “Didn’t she get rather tired of that?” she asked.
“Oh, mother, were you listening?”
“I couldn’t very well help hearing.”
“That’s a new story,” said Cassy, gravely undressing her doll. “I’ve never told it to Flora before. It’s not quite a true story, but I wish it was, don’t you?”
“All but the occupation of the little girl’s mother. I think she would get dreadfully tired of sitting on a velvet chair, and of eating sandwiches and pie all day.”
Cassy laughed.
“I don’t believe I’d get tired of them. Come, Flora, you must go to bed. I’ll give you one more sniff of violets before you go.” And after being allowed once more to bury her snub nose in the bunch of violets, Flora was put to bed, her crib being a wooden footstool turned upside down, and her covers being some old bits of cotton cloth.
“Go call Jerry and we’ll have supper,” said Mrs. Law.
Cassy placed the violets carefully in the middle of the table, and leaving her mother to dish up the oat-meal, she went in search of Jerry. Hearing voices in the back yard she first went there, but there was no sign of him, and she went next to the front door, which generally stood wide open. She looked up and down the dingy street, but saw nothing of her brother. She ran down the steps looking to right and left. At the corner she saw Billy Miles with a group of boys.