Part 2 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: DOTTY AND KATIE VISITING THE BLIND GIRLS.]
”I know your dress is pretty,” said Octavia, gently, ”and I know you are pretty, too, your voice is so sweet.”
”Well, I eat canny,” said Katie, ”and that makes my voice sweet. I'se got 'most a hunnerd bushels o' canny to my house.”
”Have you truly?” asked the children, gathering about Flyaway, and kissing her.
”Yes, and I'se got a sweet place in my neck, too; but my papa's kissed it all out o' me.”
”Isn't she a darling?” said Octavia, with delight.
”Yes,” answered Dotty, very glad to say a word to such remarkable children as these; ”yes, she is a darling; and she has on a white dress with blue spots, and a hat trimmed with blue; and her hair is straw color. They call her Flyaway, because she can't keep still a minute.”
”Yes, I does; I keeps still two, free, five, _all_ the minutes,” cried Katie; and to prove it, she flew across the yard, and began to pry into one of the play-houses.
”She doesn't mean to be naughty; you must scuse her,” spoke up Dotty, very loud; for she still held unconsciously to the idea that blind people must have dull ears. ”She is a nice baby; but I s'pose you don't know there are some play-houses in this yard, and she'll get into mischief if I don't watch her.”
”Why, all these play-houses are ours,” said little curly-haired Emily; ”whose did you think they were?”
”Yours?” asked Dotty, in surprise; ”can you play?”
Emily laughed merrily.
”Why not? Did you think we were sick?”
Dotty did not answer.
”I am Mrs. Holiday,” added Emily; ”that is, I generally am; but sometimes I'm Jane. Didn't you ever read Rollo on the Atlantic?”
Dotty, who could only stammer over the First Reader at her mother's knee, was obliged to confess that she had never made Rollo's acquaintance.
”We have books read to us,” said Emily. ”In the work-hour we go into the sitting-room, and there we sit with the bead-boxes in our laps, making baskets, and then our teacher reads to us out of a book, or tells us a story.”
”That is very nice,” said Dotty; ”people don't read to me much.”
”No, of course not, because you can see. People are kinder to blind children--didn't you know it? I'm glad I had my eyes put out, for if they hadn't been put out I shouldn't have come here.”
”Where should you have gone, then?”
”I shouldn't have gone anywhere; I should just have staid at home.”
”Don't you like to stay at home?”
Emily shrugged her shoulders.
”My paw killed a man.”
”I don't know what a paw is,” said Dotty.
”O, Flyaway Clifford, you've broken a teapot!”
”No matter,” said Emily, kindly; ”'twas made out of a gone-to-seed poppy.