Donald and Dorothy

by Mary Mapes Dodge

"Oh, that was long ago, Ellen. Jamie can walk now, you know, and if you look after him sometimes, you'll soon be able to help Charity wonderfully."

"All right!" was Ellen Eliza's cordial answer. "I'll do it. Somehow, I never thought of it. But I often help Mother. She says I'm the best-hearted of all the children, and so I am. You see if I don't help Charity after this."

The conversion seemed too sudden to be very lasting; but Ellen Eliza, who was really sincere, proceeded at once to put her new resolution into practice. To be sure, her renowned tender heart did not make her all at once an experienced housemaid, seamstress, and nurse, as Charity was; but from that day it made her, at intervals, a willing little hand-maiden, and so gave her sister many a leisure hour for reading and study. More than this, Ellen Eliza and Dorry became close friends in Charity's behalf, and one thing led to another, until Charity actually attended school regularly. She was behind most of the scholars, of course; but very often she spent an hour in the Cosey Corner, where Dorry helped her to study her lessons. Her progress was remarkable.

"You make everything so beautifully plain, I can't help improving," she would say to Dorry. And Dorry would laugh and protest that the teacher was learning as much as the pupil, and that they were a wonderful pair, anyway.

All this while, Charity, bright and hopeful, was doing a goodly share of house duties, and making the Danby home more sunny with her happiness. Little Jamie was her delight, as she was his; but she was no longer jaded and discouraged. Ellen Eliza looked at her with pride, and willingly submitted to the school teaching that Charity, in turn, was able to give her.

"I can't bear 'rithmetic," was the tender-hearted one's comment, "but I have to learn my tables, else Charity'd worry, and Dorry wouldn't like it. And jography's nice, 'cause Pa likes me to tell him about it, when he comes home. Soon's I get big, I mean to make Helen and Is'bella learn their lessons like everything!"

Alas! The new educational movement met with a sudden but temporary check in the shape of the measles. One fine day, that unwelcome visitant came into the house, and laid its hand on poor little Helen. In a few days, Isabella and Jamie were down beside her—not very ill, but all three just ill enough to require a darkened room, careful nursing, and a bountiful supply of Dorry's willing oranges.

This was why Charity, for a time, was cut off from her studies, and why she was quite taken by surprise when word came to her of the G. B. C., and that she was to join it, as soon as the little ones could spare her.

You have seen Charity botanizing on the hill-side with the other girls, but to understand her zeal, you should have heard her defend the science against that sarcastic brother of hers—Daniel David. In vain that dreadful boy hung dried stalks and dead branches all about her room, and put dandelions in her tea cup, and cockles in her hair brush—pretending all the while that he was a good boy bringing "specimens" to his dear sister. In vain he challenged every botanical remark she made, defying her to prove it. She always was equal to the occasion in spirit, if not in knowledge.

One Saturday morning, though, she had her triumph, and it was an event to be remembered. Daniel David had listened, with poorly concealed interest, while Charity was describing a flower to Ellen Eliza,—how it has calyx, corolla, stamens, and pistils; how some flowers have not all these parts, but that all flowers have pistils and stamens,—when he, as usual, challenged her to "prove it."