Part 9 (2/2)
”It is so queer G.o.d is in this country just the same as He is in the State of Maine! I said my prayers to Him before I started, and there He was and heard; and now He's here and hears too; I don't see how. You can't think without He sees your thoughts.”
Dotty, brus.h.i.+ng her hair, looked in the gla.s.s so intently that she did not observe her Aunt Maria, who had quietly entered the room. Mrs.
Clifford was a wise woman, but she could not look into her niece's heart. She thought Dotty was admiring her own beauty in the mirror, whereas the child was not thinking of it at all.
What Mr. Beecher once said of little folks is very true:--
”Ah, well, there is a world of things in children's minds that grown-up people do not understand, though they too once were young.”
Mrs. Clifford went up to Dotty and kissed her. Then the little girl was startled from her musings, and pa.s.sing down stairs with her hand in Mrs.
Clifford's, thought she should be perfectly happy if dear Prudy were only on the other side of her.
Everything she saw that was new or strange she had to stop and admire, thinking it was an article that could only belong out West.
”O, auntie, what is this queer little thing with doors?”
”Grace's cabinet, dear.”
”Her _cabijen_,” exclaimed Flyaway, darting in from the next room.
”Good morning, Dotty Dimple,” said Horace: ”did my Guinea pig wake you?
I lost him out. What a noise he made! I wish he was in Guinea, where he came from.”
Dotty had never seen a Guinea pig. It was another curiosity, which promised to be more remarkable than Phebe or Katinka. She began to think coming West was like having one long play-day. Even the dining-room was a novelty, with the swinging fan suspended over the table to keep off flies.
”I have been wondering,” said Mrs. Clifford, as she urned the coffee, ”how we shall amuse our little Dotty while she is here.”
”Fis.h.i.+ng,” suggested Horace.
”Nutting,” said Grace.
”_Prudy_ went to a _wedding_ when she was in Indiana,” remarked Dotty, in a low voice.
”We will try to get up a wedding then,” said Horace; ”but they are a little out of fas.h.i.+on now.”
”We have been thinking,” observed Mrs. Clifford, ”of a nutting excursion for to-day. How would you like it, Edward?”
”Very much,” replied Mr. Parlin. ”I can spend but one day with you, and I would as lief spend it nutting as in any other way.”
”Only one day, Uncle Edward!” cried Grace and Horace.
”Only one day, papa!” stammered Dotty, feeling like a little kitten who _did_ have her paw on a mouse, but sees the mouse disappear down a hole.
”O, I shall leave you, my daughter. You will stay here a week or two, and meet me in Indianapolis.”
Dotty was able to eat once more.
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