“Pretty well, sir,” answered Dotty, faintly. “There was a man came in and talked. He said he learned his letters with a whalebone. I mean his teacher snipped him with it.”
“It was the same man,” said Prudy, “that came up stairs and talked to us. I guess he was a printer, for he told a story, and he said, ‘The man approached the child, and found her weeping.’ If he hadn’t been a printer he wouldn’t have said that; he’d have said, ‘The man went up to the child and found she was crying.’”
“What do you mean by a printer, Prudy?”
“O, these men that write books, papa. They always use all the big words—don’t they?”
Dotty was much obliged to her kind sister for leading the conversation away from the primary school, for she had been afraid some one might strike in with an awkward question.
“O, dear! I hoped I was going to have the sore throat,” thought she, as she awoke next morning; “and then I could stay away from school. But nothing pleasant ever happens to me. When I want the sore throat, I can’t have it; and when I don’t want it, that’s the very time it comes.”
For several days Dotty continued to feel unhappy, and hardly dared play with the other little girls, lest they should laugh at her. But by degrees her sensitiveness wore away, and after practising on her lessons at home till she could read without stumbling over the hard words, she became the gayest of the gay.
She drew her sled to school nearly every day, for there was enough dirty snow and ice in the yard to afford a little coasting. Several of the other children had sleds, but Lina Rosenberg had none, and, remembering the former friendship between herself and Dotty, followed her like her shadow, begging for rides.
Dotty bore this for a while; but at last her patience gave way.