"Wasn't Dotty some bad, too?"
"Yes, Dotty often did wrong."
Then Jenny wept afresh.
"She knew she was worse than Dotty, though. She wished,—O, dear, as true as she lived,—she wished she was dead and buried, and drowned in the Red Sea, and the grass over her grave, and shut up in jail, and everything else."
Then Mrs. Parlin soothed her with kind words, but told the truth with every one.
"No 'm," Jennie said; "it wasn't right to take fruit-cake without leave, or tell wrong stories either; she wouldn't any more. Yes'm, she would try to be good—she never had tried much.—Yes 'm, she would ask God to help her. Should you suppose He would do it?
"Yes 'm, she would ask Him not to let her have much temptation. She did believe she would rather be a good girl—a real good girl, like Prudy, not like Dotty!—than to have a velvet dress with spangles all over it."
All this while Dotty did not waken. In the morning she was surprised to see her little bedfellow looking so cheerful.
"I've told your grandmother all about it," said Jennie with a smile. "I knew I did wrong, but I don't believe I should have meant to if you hadn't acted so your own self—now that's a fact."
"You haven't seen my grandmother," returned Dotty, not noticing the last clause of her friend's remark. "You dreamed it."