After Dotty had gone to bed and forgotten her great wrong in a refreshing sleep, Mrs. Parlin went into the child’s room, and took from the closet her little red frock. She touched it with loving hands; for there is something in the look of a little one’s clothes that goes straight to a mother’s heart. She wished to make sure there was no hole in the pocket. She turned it wrong side outward, and smiled as the slate pencils, empty spools, buttons, strings, bits of licorice, and wads of paper, fell into her lap.
“There is everything here but the screw-up pencil,” said she to herself; “and I see no place where that could have crept out. But what is this?”
The skirt of the dress was lined, and just where the pocket went in was a rent an inch long.
“She might have put the pencil in there; let me see.”
So Mrs. Parlin examined, and found that a long and slender substance had dropped down to the bottom of the skirt. She put in her finger, and drew out the screw-up pencil.
“Poor little Lina! You have been unjustly accused! It grieves me that my daughter has such a hasty spirit.”
Dotty was greatly surprised, in the morning, to see the pencil lying on her pillow.
“But perhaps it is not yours,” said her mother; “it may belong to Tate Penny, or some other little girl.”
“O, mamma Parlin, here’s a place where I scratched it with a pin. What made you think I didn’t know my own pencil?”
“Why, you said Lina had taken that.”