“Only think of my letting her go to school to-day! She said to me, ‘O, ma, I must go; for Dotty Dimple and I have an engagement!’ She thinks there’s nobody like Dotty Dimple!”
Mr. Parlin turned the knob, but Mrs. Penny continued.
“The child came home one night very much agitated, and wanted to know why I didn’t make her be good, like Dotty Dimple. I told her I couldn’t; she must try for herself. ‘But, ma,’ said she, ‘you ought to pray to me, and make me be good; that’s what Dotty Dimple’s mother does to her! Dotty says, if our Nancy put her to bed, she shouldn’t be any better’n me!’”
Mr. Parlin laughed.
“Our little daughter thinks very well of herself,” said he; “and that is the most discouraging thing about her. Good by, Mrs. Penny. To-morrow, as soon as the storm is over, I will go for the children.”
“Good by, sir; and send my boy back, if you find him.”
“Good by, thir,” said a little dumpling of a girl, called Tid, peeping out from behind the closet door.
“My precious Tate,” thought Mrs. Penny, earnestly; “if I ever get her home again, I will take more pains with her. I presume Nancy doesn’t hear her say her prayers half the time. She seems inclined to tell wrong stories lately; who knows but I could break up the habit, if, as Dotty Dimple says, I put her to bed myself?”
Mr. Parlin overtook Ben Penny, and helped him home. By that time he longed for shelter: but how could he rest until he had seen for himself that Dotty was safe? The Rosenberg boy had no doubt intended to tell the truth, but there might be some mistake; so the anxious father went all the way to Mr. Harris’s, and, when he arrived there, found the children fast asleep.