Dotty Dimple At Play Part 7

A girl behind the counter gave her the right shades, and she slowly started for home. It was about four o'clock of a November day. Dotty, glancing idly at the sky, saw that the sun was already getting low.

"How queer it is!" thought she; "it seems as if the sun grows sleepy very early nowadays, and goes to bed right in the middle of the afternoon.

Well, I declare, if there isn't Lina Rosenberg!"

The beautiful little Jewess was just turning an opposite corner, and, as usual, the sight of her face bewitched Dotty in a minute.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LINA ROSENBERG INVITES DOTTY TO HER HOUSE.]

"O, Lina Rosenberg, come over here! How do you do?"

"I'm very well, Dotty: how do YOU do? Only I wish you wouldn't call me a BUG!"

"Well, then, Lina, you mustn't have bugs in your name if you don't want to be called by 'em. Did you know I'd been Out West?"

"No; you haven't, Dotty Dimple!"

"Yes, I have; you may ask my father. I kept my own ticket right in my glove, and took 'most the whole care of myself. Went to the Blind 'Sylum; found a pearl in an oyster; been 'way down in a coal mine; and--and--"

"Come to my house, won't you, and tell me all about it?" said Lina Rosenberg, looking as beguiling as possible, and taking Dotty's unresisting hand.

Dotty knew very well that her mother would never allow her to go to Lina's house; but she did not like to say that, and she only replied,--

"I've matched my worsteds, and now I must go home."

"O, you can go home afterwards. My mother said to me to-day, 'Do you bring Dotty Dimple home to supper this very night. She'll be so glad to see you!'"

Dotty gave another glance at the sky, then one at the city clock.

"What time do you drink tea, Lina?"

"At five, 'most always."

Dotty had long felt a great curiosity about the domestic affairs of the Jews; and here was an unexpected opportunity to sit down at the very table with them. She had an invitation from the head of the family, and that was something which did not happen every day. She could go home any time afterwards; for their own tea-hour was not till half past six.

"I'll walk along with you a little way, Lina, and think it over."

It was true Mrs. Parlin did not approve of Mandoline or any of her family; but Dotty thought she would forget that, just for once.

"O, dear! I keep thinking how my mamma said, 'I do not wish you to play with Lina Rosenberg!' Now I can 'most always forget easy enough; but when I TRY to forget, it says itself over and over--and I remember just as hard!"

As they turned another corner they met Susy, who had been sent to the dye-house.

"Why, Dotty," said she, "what are you doing on that street?"

Lina spoke up very boldly,--

"She's going to the doctor's with me, Susy Parlin, to get a plaster for my mother."

At this wicked speech Dotty's heart almost sank into her boots; for she had never known before that Lina would tell a deliberate lie.

Lina lived in a little grocery store. Her father was gone away to-day,> and her mother had just served a customer with a pound of damp brown sugar, saying, as she clipped the string,--

"It's very cheap sweetening at that price; we are going to rise on it to-morrow."

After that she stood a minute in front of the store, and shook her head at Jacob, a little boy, some three years old, who was trying to balance a patent washboard against a tree which grew out of the brick pavement. It was a large, scrawny tree, which looked as if it was obliged to live there, but didn't want to, and had tried in vain to get burnt up in the Portland fire. From the lower branches of the tree depended a couple of dun-colored hams, and a painted board, with the words, "Good Family b.u.t.ter."

"Come in, Jacob, you naughty boy!" said Mrs. Rosenberg, this time shaking him, because she was afraid he would injure the patent wash-board. Then Jacob, who had been waiting for the shaking, and would not stir without it, went in at the side door crying; for the family lived in one end of the store.

Mrs. Rosenberg had a great many children, and was obliged to work very hard at various employments. Just now she went to spreading pumpkin-seeds to dry under the stove. She was not expecting company; and when Mandoline entered with Dotty, she looked up from her work with a frown.

"Who've you brought home with you this time, Mandoline Rosenberg?" said she. "Take off your hat and hang it over them tommatuses; but mind yer don't drop it into that dish of lard."

"Mother," pleaded Mandoline, "we want to go up chamber to see my pretty things; her mother sent her a-purpose."

"No, she didn't; no such a thing! You're a master hand to pick up children and fetch 'em home here, and then crawl out of it by lying!

Besides, you've got to knit. I must have those socks done by to-morrow noon, Mandy, or I'll know the reason why."

As Mrs. Rosenberg spoke, she pushed a waiter full of seeds under the stove as if she hated the very sight of them; and when she stood up again, Dotty observed that her dirty calico dress did not come anywhere near the tops of her calf-skin shoes.

"But, mother," said Mandoline, with a winning smile, "this is Dotty Dimple, the little girl that gave me the needle-book."

This was partly true. Dotty had given Mandoline an old needle-book; but it had been in return for some maple sugar, which the little Jewess had pilfered from her father's store.

"Dotty Dimple, is it?" said Mrs. Rosenberg, with a sharp look at the little guest.

"I don't know now any better than I did before. That's a name for a doll-baby; I should say."

"Alice Parlin, mother."

"Is it? O, well; you may take her up stairs out of my way; but mind, you must knit every minute you're gone."

Dotty was greatly abashed by this reception, and would have rushed out of the house, but Mandoline held her fast.

"You shan't go a step," said she, "I'll hide your hat."

So Dotty, under peril of going home bareheaded, was obliged to creep up the rickety staircase with Mandoline. She likened her feelings on the occasion to those of a person whom "the mayor is putting in the lockup."

Indeed, the "lock-up" was Dotty's dream of all the horrors, and she had no doubt it was the mayor himself who always stood with his hands outstretched, ready to thrust wicked people into it.

The chamber which the little girls entered was an unfinished one, and from the rafters hung paper bags of dried herbs; for, besides being a housekeeper and clerk, Mrs. Rosenberg was something of a doctress withal, and made "bitters" for her particular friends.

"Sit down here on the bed, Dotty Dimple, and look at my paper dolls,"

said Lina, producing from under a disjointed chair, an old cigar box full of paper heroes and heroines. Mandoline was an artist in he! way, and these figures were clad in the most brilliant costumes of silver and gold. Dotty was dazzled. Never before had it been her lot to see such magnificent dolls,--dolls which shone so in the sun; every one of them a king or a queen, and fit to wear a crown.

"O, Lina," sighed she, in ecstasy, "where _do_ you get your silver and gold?"

"Tease for it," replied the little Jewess.

Dotty knew, to her own sorrow, that Lina was capable of teasing. It was hard to keep so much as an apple or a peppermint away from her if she happened to set her heart on it.