I know Polly Whiting is lonesome without you." Off went the children, Flyaway "with a heart for any fate," but Dotty still oppressed by the shadow of the ten-cent piece.
"If I don't give it to Prudy, will I be dishonest?
Will I be as bad as Jennie Vance ?" When they entered the nursery, Miss Polly was standing before the mirror, arranging her black cap, and weaving into her collar a square black breast-pin, which aunt Louise said looked like a gravestone.
Flyaway peeped in too, placing her smooth pink cheek beside Miss Polly's wrinkled one.
"I don't look alike, Miss Polly," said she; "and you don't look alike too." Certainly not; no more alike than a blush-rose bud and a dried apple.
"What makes the red go out of folks' cheeks when they grow old, and the wrinkles crease in, like the pork in baked beans ?" queried Dotty.
"I couldn't tell you," replied the good lady, giving a pat to her cap, and settling the bows carefully; "but if you had asked how I happened to grow old before my time, I should say I'd had such a hard chance through life, and trouble always leaves its mark." "Does it?
O, dear! I have trouble,--ever so much; will it quirk my face all up, like yours ?" "You have trouble, Dotty Parlin?
Haven't you found out yet that the lines have fallen to you in pleasant places ?" "I don't know what you mean by lines," said Dotty, thinking of fish-hooks; "but when it rains, and folks want me to do things that are real hard, then why, I'm blue, now truly." "Then we're blue, now truly," added Flyaway by way of finish.
"What would you do, children, if you were driven about, as I used to be, from post to pillar, with no mother to care for you ?" "If I hadn't no mamma, I could go barefoot, like a dog," said Flyaway, brightening with the new idea; "I could paddle in the water too, and eat pepnits." "O, child! But what if you had neither father nor mother ?" "Then," said Flyaway coolly, "I should go to some house where there _was_ a father'n mother." "Why, you little heartless thing! But that is always the way with children; their parents set their lives by them, but not a 'thank you' do they get for their love! Try a pinch," continued she, offering her snuff-box to the little folks, who both declined.

This Polly thought was strange.

They must like snuff if they followed the natural bent of their noses.
"Yes, Katie, as I was saying, you little know how your mother loves you." "Yes um, I do.

She loves me more 'n the river, and the sky, and the bridge.

My papa loves me too, only but he don't _say_ nuffin' 'bout it." "Yes, yes; just so," said Miss Polly, who talked to the simplest infants just as she did to grown people.