"Don't you take him in!" exclaimed Angeline, the kitchen girl; "it's a bad sign to have birds come fluttering round a window."
"What do you mean by a sign?" asked Dotty, who had never heard of any silly superstitions in her life.
"Let him alone," cried Johnny, "or you'll die before the week's out, sure's you live!"
Dotty laughed. "A bird can't make me die," said she, seizing the trembling little oriole, and holding him close to her bosom. "O, you birdie darling! Did your mamma go 'way off, and couldn't find a worm? Dotty'll be your mamma, so she will."
She put him in a basket stuffed with rags, and hung over him tenderly for half an hour.
"You're bringing down trouble, I'm afraid, child," said Angeline, gravely, as she walked back and forth, doing her work.
Mrs. Parlin, away off at Willowbrook, was at that moment bathing Mrs. Clifford's forehead. I think she might have dropped the sponge in dismay if she had known what pernicious nonsense was finding its way into Dotty's ears.
Just as Angeline was in the midst of a ghost story, Johnny rushed in again.
"Come," said he, shaking Dotty by the shoulders, "let's go play poison."
"O, no, Johnny. I'm hearing the nicest, awfullest story! And then it rains so, too!"