A TRUE STORY.
One day little Sallie's mother was very ill indeed; she was lying on the bed with a bandage dipped in ice water around her head, for her head was throbbing and aching as if it were made entirely of double rows of teeth, every one of them afflicted with a jumping, raging toothache, and her little daughter felt so sorry for her, that she begged permission to go to a shop and buy her a new head.
Sallie was an only child; she played little with other children, and she was so accustomed to being constantly with her father and mother, and other grown persons, that she talked in a very amusing and funny fashion, for she would use very long words, perfectly understanding their meaning, but with such comically strange jumblings and twistings, and alterings of syllables, as to make it very difficult to preserve a becoming gravity while listening to her. If you laughed, the fun was all over, for Sallie would turn as red as a whole box of wafers; all the dimples in her face would take French leave, and you could almost have declared there was a bonfire lighted up in each of her eyes; but this only lasted a moment, for she was a sweet-tempered, affectionate little creature, and got over being laughed at as quick as possible, which is a great deal quicker than you or I would have done.
"Dear mamma," said Sallie, her face perfectly beaming with tenderness and sympathy; "dear mamma, what a terrible pain you are in; it is really overpalling! It's very instraordinary that you should have such a head. I can feel the beating! I wish you could sell it to the drummer of a regimen, and buy a new one; I wish I could give you mine, mamma; mine is perfectly empty; not a speck of pain, or anything else, in it, and it would last just so, as long as you live, and ever so much longer. It is so destressing to have a head so brimful of sufferling;" and little Sallie looked as grieved as cock-robin's wife when he was killed by the sparrow, with his bow and arrow.
"My dear dove and darling," said her mother, "I know you would give your head and shoulders, and all your new shoes, to make me well, but you can do nothing but keep perfectly quiet, as still as a mouse with the lock-jaw. As the Frenchman says, you must 'take hold of your tongue, and put your toe on your mouth;'—he meant finger, I suppose. You need not leave the room, my little Sallie, only do not make any noise."
"Play softly, Kitty; your Mamma is very undisposed."
So Sallie sat down very quietly on the carpet with her kitten, only whispering once in a while, "Play softly, kitty, for your mamma is very undisposed."
Just at this moment another little girl came darting like a sunbeam into the room. It was Fanny. Fanny was Sallie's cousin; she was a dear little weeny woman of seven years, with a lily-white skin, hazel eyes, and a sweet, musical voice, and she ran up to Sallie with such a gentle, song-like salutation, you would have supposed it was a bob-o-link, saying, "How do you do?" Let me tell you, if you have never heard a bob-o-link, its few low notes are deliciously sweet, and are only surpassed by the sweet voice of a good little girl.