Still the little girl did not understand. Her thoughts were like these:
"Grandma thinks I'm ever so silly! Prudy thinks I'm silly! But isn't Jennie silly too? And O, she takes cake, all secret, out of her new mother's tin chest. I don't know what will become of Jennie Vance."
Mrs. Parlin was about to say more, when Miss Flyaway, who had been all over the house in two minutes, danced in, saying, "the Charlie boy" had come!
It was little lisping Charlie Gray, saying, "If you pleathe, 'm, may we have the Deacon to go to mill? And then, if we may, can you thpare uth a quart 'o milk every thingle night? Cauthe, if you can't, then you muthn't."
Deacon was the old horse; and as Mr. Parlin was quite willing he should go to mill, Harry Gray came an hour afterwards and led him away. With regard to the other request, Mrs. Parlin had to think a few minutes.
"Yes, Charlie," said she, at last; "you may have the milk, because I would like to oblige your mother; and you may tell her I will send it every night by the children."
Now, Mrs. Gray was the doctor's wife. She was a kind woman, and kept one closet shelf full of canned fruit and jellies for sick people; but for all that, the children did not like her very well. Prudy thought it might be because her nose turned up "like the nose of a tea-kettle;" but Susy said it was because she asked so many questions. If the little Parlins met her on the street when they went of an errand, she always stopped them to inquire what they had been buying at the store, or took their parcels out of their hands and felt them with her fingers. She was interested in very little things, and knew how all the parlors in town were papered and carpeted, and what sort of cooking-stoves everybody used.
Dotty hung her head when her grandmother said she wished her to go every night to Mrs. Gray's with a quart of milk.
"Must I?" said she. "Why, grandma, she'll ask me if my mother keeps a girl, and how many teaspoons we've got in the house; she will, honestly. Mayn't somebody go with me?"
"Ask me will I go?" said Katie, "for I love to shake my head!"