"What I mean is this: I wanted to pay Mrs.Potter some money, so I could go free before I was eighteen." "Then you would be _unbound_, aunt Polly." "Yes; but one day Isaac found my money,--I kept it in an old tobacco-box,--and, just to hector me, he kept tossing it up in the air, till all of a sudden it fell through a crack in the floor; and that was the last I saw of it." [Illustration: "HERE HE IS!"] "What a naughty, careless boy!" After Dotty had said this, she blushed.
"Naughty, careless boy!" echoed Flyaway.

"Here he is!" holding up a paper doll shaped very much like a whale, with the fin divided for legs, the ears of a cat, and the arms of a windmill.

"Here he is!" "He didn't look much like that," said Polly, laughing.

"He had plenty of money of his own, and I tried to make him give me back a quarter; but do you believe he wouldn't, not even a ninepence?
And when I teased him, that was the time he bit my arm." "He oughtn't to bitted your arm, course, indeed not!" "But, aunt Polly," faltered Dotty, whose efforts to forget the ten-cent piece had proved worse than useless, "but it didn't do Isaac any good to lose your money down a crack." "No, it was sheer mischief." "And if it doesn't do folks any good to lose things, you know, why, what's the use--to--to--go and get his own money to pay it back with ?--Isaac I mean." "What do you say, Dotty Parlin?
You, a child that goes to Sabbath school! Don't you know it is a sin to steal a pin?
And if we lose or injure other people's things, and don't make it up to them, we're as good as thieves." "As good ?" "As bad, then." "But s'posin'-- s'posin' folks lose things when they _don't_ toss 'em up in the air, and don't mean to,--the wind, you know, or a kind of an accident, Miss Polly,--" "Well ?" "And s'posin' I didn't have any more money 'n I wanted myself, and Prudy had the most--H'm--" "Well ?" "Then it isn't as bad as thieves; now is it?
She's got the most.
Prudy's older 'n I am--" "Honesty is honesty," said Miss Polly, firmly, "in young or old.

If you've lost your sister's money, you must make it up to her." "O, must I, Miss Polly?
Such a tinty-tonty mite of money as I've got,--only sixty-five cents." "Honesty is honesty," repeated Miss Polly, "in rich or poor." "Dear me! will my mother say so, too ?" "Your mother is on the right side, Dotty.