CHAPTER IX.
A DARK DAY.
Meanwhile Dotty was lying on the hay in the barn scaffold.

It is very easy to be unhappy when we particularly try to be so; and Dotty had arrived at the point of _almost_ believing that she _almost_ wished she was actually dead.
And, to add to her gloom, a fierce-looking man, with a long horse-whip in his hand, came and peeped in at the barn door, and screamed to Dotty in a hoarse voice that "Ruth Dillon wanted her right off, and none of her dilly-dallying." And then, on going into the house, what should she learn but that this man had come to take Ruth home, because her mother was sick.

The children--so Ruth said--must stay with Polly and be little ladies.
O, dear, it was as lonesome as a line-storm, after lively Ruth had gone away.

Dotty began to think she liked her brisk little scoldings, after all.
"Does you feel so bad ?" said little Flyaway, gazing on her sober cousin with pity; "your mouth looks just this way;" and, putting up both hands, she drew down her own little lips at the corners.
"Yes, I feel bad," said Dotty.

"You needn't talk to me; where's your orange ?" "I squoze it," replied Flyaway; "and falled it down my froat.