CHAPTER XI.
AUNT POLLY'S STORY.
Flyaway sat on the kitchen floor, feeding Dinah with a roasted apple.
As often as Dinah refused a teaspoonful, she put it into her own mouth, saying, with a wise nod, "My child, she's sick; hasn't any _appletite_." Out of doors it was raining heartily.

It seemed as if the "upper deep" was tipping over, and pouring itself into the lap of the earth.
"O, Ruthie," sighed Dotty Dimple, "my mother won't come while it's such weather.

Do you s'pose 'twill ever clear off ?" [Blank Page] [Illustration: FLYAWAY AND DINAH.] "Yes, I do," replied Ruth, trimming a pie briskly; "it only began last night at five." "Why, Ruthie Dillon! it began three weeks ago, by the clock! Don't you know that day I couldn't go visiting?
Only sometimes it stops a while, and then begins again." "If you're going to have the blues, Miss Dotty, I'll thank you kindly just to take yourself out of this kitchen.

Polly Whiting is here, and she is as much as a body can endures in this dull weather." "It's pitiful 'bout the rain, Dotty; but you mustn't scold when God sended it," said Flyaway, dropping the feeble Dinah, and pursuing her cousin round the room with a pin.

In a minute they were both laughing gayly, till Flyaway caught herself on her little rocking-chair, and "got a _torn_ in her apron." That ended the sport.
"What shall I do to make myself happy ?" said Dotty, musingly; for she wished to put off all thought of Prudy's money.