“I wish my children were all at home,” sighed Mrs. Parlin, every time the shrieks wakened her. “I know Mrs. Harris will take good care of Dotty; but I don’t like to have my little girl away from me on such a night as this.”
At the same time Dotty Dimple was lying in a room whose walls were papered so strangely, that she thought the pictures kept her awake even in the dark. A boy pumping water for some cows—she wondered why the water didn’t freeze; and a lady “jumping the rope with a shawl.” Then the bedstead had very high posts, with a ball stuck upon every one, like a head on a pin.
“People do have such queer things in their houses that it keeps me awake,” thought Dotty, who had been asleep most of the afternoon.
“And there’s Tate, now—nothing keeps her awake. I wish she was; but I don’t dare touch her for fear she’ll have the nose-bleed.”
The wind seized the house between its teeth and shook it.
“O, my!” thought Dotty, “where are we going to? S’pose this house should blow to Europe, and my father’s house should blow to Boston! But there needn’t anybody think I can help it, for I can’t. It wasn’t running away. Miss Parker said we might; and I don’t s’pect my papa knows this minute.”
Dotty was so homesick that Mrs. Harris had not mentioned her father’s visit.
“That Solly Rosenbug, that’s called something else,—I’ve forgot his name,—he won’t remember to tell him. My father’ll have to print me in the papers. ‘My daughter Alice, with a calico wrapper on. Have you seen her? Little pockets in, and a pair of red mittens.’ Nobody has ever seen me, the snow was so thick; and when they are so scared they can’t speak a word, then I shall get there; but not go through the cellar window, though, ’cause I didn’t run away, and couldn’t help it. I was doing just right.
“How they’ll feel! And what’s the first words grandma’ll say? I know. She always says ’em after I’ve had a dreadful time, and didn’t get drowned, or die,—