"Flatterers are not generally to be trusted," replied Mrs. Clifford. "Flyaway, that is the fourth needle you have lost."
Here was another lesson for Dotty's memory-shelf. "I must not say things that are not true, just to be polite. It is flattering and wicked; and besides that, people always know better."
It was a quiet, busy, cheerful day. Dotty forgot to complain of the weather. Just before supper Flyaway jumped down from her grandpapa's knee, where she had been talking to him through his "conversation-tube," and ran to the window.
"Why, 'tisn't raining," cried she; "true's I'm walking on this floor 'tisn't raining!"
Dotty clapped her hands, and watched the sun coming out like pure gold, and turning the dark clouds into silver.
"We were patient and willing for it to rain," said she; "but of course that wasn't why it cleared off."
And it wasn't why Flyaway lost her thumb-nail, either. She lost that—or half of it—in the crack of the door. The poor little thumb was very painful, and had to be put in a cot.
"It wearies me," said Flyaway; "it makes me afraid I shan't ever have a nail on there again."
Her mother assured her she would. The same God who calls up the little blades of grass out of the ground could make a finger-nail grow.
"Will He?" said Flyaway, smiling through tears; "but 'haps He'll forget how it looks. Musn't I save a piece of my nail, mamma, and lay it up on the shelf, so He can see it, and make the other one like it?"