"Poh, she couldn't scare me! I flied on a broomstick my own self, and I tumbled off. 'Course Mrs. Knowles can't do it; big folks like her!"
At the same time Patty did not like to see Mrs. Knowles come to the house. It wasn't likely she had ever "flied on a broomstick;" but when Mrs. Lyman walked out with the good woman, as she sometimes did, Patty was uneasy till she got home again. Nobody suspected the little girl of such foolishness, and she never told of it till years after, when she was a tall young lady, and did not mind being laughed at for her childish ideas.
But perhaps you would like to know what became of her live dollar. She did not know what to do with so much money, and talked about it first to one and then to another.
"Moses," said she, "which would you ravver do, have me have a hundred cents, and you have ninety-nine cents, or me have ninety-nine cents, and you have a hundred?"
Moses appeared to think hard for a moment, and then said,—
"Well, I guess I'd rather you'd have the hundred."
"O, would you?" cried Patty, kissing him gratefully.
"Yes," said Moses; "for if I had the most, you'd be teasing me for the odd cent."
The dollar burnt Patty's fingers. Some days she thought she would give it to the heathen, and other days she wondered if it would be wrong to spend it for candy. Sometimes she meant to buy a pair of silver shoe-buckles for her darling Moses, and then again a vandyke for her darling Mary. In short, she could not decide what to do with such a vast sum of money.
One day there came to the house a beggar girl, a little image of dirt and rags. She told a pitiful story about a dead mother and a drunken father, and nobody could know that it was quite untrue, and her mother was alive, and waiting for her two miles away.