“Be careful, Dotty.”
“O, I’m very careful. I just know she did it; and Mrs. Rosenbug wouldn’t mind if she did.”
“Dotty, I cannot allow you to talk so.”
“Well, then, I won’t; but I went there once, and staid all night, mamma, and that’s how I know about Mrs. Rosenbug and the dog. But I couldn’t make her say she did it; she kept saying she never. I devised her to give it right back. I told her I’d tell my papa, and when the mayor took her to the jurymens, then how’d she feel!”
“Why, Dotty, did you talk so to Lina?”
“O, I didn’t say much, mamma; only told her she was an awful, wicked, horrid girl; and oughtn’t I to say so, you know? for it’s the black and blue truth, mamma, and you wouldn’t want me to tell a lie!”
Dotty’s tongue was running at such a rate that it must be stopped at once.
“You may go up stairs, Dotty, and get your grandmother’s knitting; but do not let us hear another word about your pencil to-night.”
The Screw-Up Pencil.—[Page 81].