“Why not?” demanded Dick suddenly, and edging along on his mother’s lap to look into Polly’s eyes. “Why couldn’t she get out, Polly?”
“Why, because she fell in,” said Polly, shaking her brown head sadly, “and there was no one to help her out, no matter how much she cried; so she made up her mind not to cry at all.”
“Didn’t she cry a teenty, wee bit?” asked little Dick, trying to wipe away the drops on his cheeks with his chubby hand.
“Not a single bit of a tear,” said Polly decidedly; “what was the use? it wouldn’t help her to get out. You see, it was just this way. She was hurrying down the garden path, just as fast as her feet would carry her, and she had a big bundle in her mouth”—
“In her mouth?” repeated little Dick in astonishment; and, slipping from his mother’s lap, he cuddled on the floor beside Polly, and folded his small hands.
“Yes, in her mouth,” said Polly merrily. “Oh! didn’t I tell you? Brown Betty was a dear little bug, just as brown as could be; and the bundle in her mouth was a piece of a dead fly she was taking home for her children’s dinner.”
“Oh!” said Dick; “tell me, Polly.”
Mrs. Whitney slipped out of her chair to finish her dressing, first pausing to pat Polly’s brown hair.
“So you see poor Brown Betty couldn’t look very well where she was going; for the piece of a dead fly stuck out in front of her eyes so far, that the first thing she knew, down she went—down, down, down,—and she never stopped till she stood in the midst of hundreds and hundreds of black creatures.”