She liked to pick beans when her father sat near reading aloud to her. He had promised to read to-night "How the water comes down from Lodore," but she knew her mother's mood too well to hope for such a pleasure to-night.
When her mother was cross, she wasn't willing for anybody to have anything.
But she couldn't take away what she had learned of it; the child hugged herself with the thought repeating gleefully:—
"Then first came one daughter,
And then came another,
To second and third
The request of their brother,
And to hear how the water
Comes down at Lodore,
With its rush and its roar—"
"Dorothy, stop!" commanded her mother. "That muttering makes me wild. It sounds like a lunatic."
Dorothy's mouth shut itself tight; the flash of defiance from the big brown eyes her mother missed; her father's observant eyes noted it. There was always a sigh in his heart for Dorothy, for her naughtiness, and for the misery she was growing up to. The misery was as inevitable as the growing up. Once in his agony he had prayed the good Father to take the child before her heart was rent, or his own.
After the gleeful music ceased the chubby fingers moved wearily, the brown head drooped; there were tears as well as sleep in the eyes that seemed made to hold nothing but sunshine.
(Dorothy is in bed for the night.)
"Will you keep the door open so I can hear voices?" pleaded Dorothy.
"Why child, what ails you?" said the mother.