"Nonsense, Mollie!" said Susie Elliot. "Cats don't die of broken hearts."
"She had been ailing for some days," Miss Ruth explained, "refusing her food and looking forlorn and miserable, and I am inclined to think instinct taught her that her end was near. You know wild animals creep away into some solitary place to die, and Dinah had a drop or two of wild-cat blood in her veins. I fancy she hid herself in some hole under the barn and died there. It was a curious coincidence, that she should have chosen that particular time, just after her doom was pronounced, to take her departure. But what grieved me most was that, excepting myself, every member of the family rejoiced that she was dead.
"Poor Dinah Diamond! She was beautiful and clever, and constant and brave, but she lived unloved and died unlamented because of her bad temper."
CHAPTER IV.
A SWALLOW-TAILED BUTTERFLY.
"If I can't have the seat I want, I won't have any; and I think you are real mean, Mollie Elliot! I ain't coming here any more."
These were the words Miss Ruth heard spoken in loud angry tones as she opened the door connecting her bedroom with the parlor, where the little girls were assembled, and caught a glimpse of an energetic figure in pink gingham running across the lawn that separated the minister's house from his next door neighbor.
"Now, Auntie," said Mollie, in answer to Miss Ruth's look of inquiry, "I am not in the least to blame. I'll leave it to the girls if I am. Fan Eldridge is so touchy! She came in a minute ago and Nellie Tyler happened to be sitting by me, and Fan marched up to her and says, 'I'll take my seat if you please'; and I said, 'It's no more your seat than it is Nellie's,' We don't have any particular seats, you know we don't, Auntie, but sit just as it happens. Well, she declared it was her seat because she had had it the last two afternoons, and I told Nellie not to give up to her because she acted so hateful about it, and then she went off mad. I'm sure I don't care; if she chooses to stay away she can."
"You don't quite mean that, Mollie," her aunt said gravely. "The Patchwork Society can't afford to lose one of its members, certainly not for so small a difference as the choice of a seat. We must have Fanny back, if I give up my seat to her. But come into this room, girls. I have something pretty to show you. Softly! or you will frighten him away."