"Then I will; but them blocks is too big, Susy. If I had a axe I'd chop 'em: I'll go get a axe." Little Prudy trotted off, and Susy never looked up from her play, and did not notice that she was gone a long while.
By and by Mrs. Parlin thought she would go and see what the children were doing; so she put on her bonnet and went over to the "new house." Susy was still busy with her blocks, but she looked up at the sound of her mother's footsteps.
"Where is Prudy?" said Mrs. Parlin, glancing around.
"I'm 'most up to heaven," cried a little voice overhead.
They looked, and what did they see? Prudy herself standing on the highest beam of the house! She had climbed three ladders to get there. Her mother had heard her say the day before that "she didn't want to shut up her eyes and die, and be all deaded up,—she meant to have her hands and face clean, and go up to heaven on a ladder."
"O," thought the poor mother, "she is surely on the way to heaven, for she can never get down alive. My darling, my darling!"
Poor Susy's first thought was to call out to Prudy, but her mother gave her one warning glance, and that was enough: Susy neither spoke nor stirred.
Mrs. Parlin stood looking up at her,—stood as white and still as if she had been frozen! Her trembling lips moved a little, but it was in prayer; she knew that only God could save the precious one.
While she was begging him to tell her what to do, a sudden thought flashed across her mind. She dared not speak, lest the sound of her voice should startle the child; but she had a bunch of keys in her pocket, and she jingled the keys, holding them up as high as possible, that Prudy might see what they were.
When the little one heard the jingling, she looked down and smiled. "You goin' to let me have some cake and 'serves in the china-closet,—me and Susy?"