“O, dear, dear! Who set this basket down on my white apron? All wrinkled up! I can’t go to school! And me with a new book, bought day before yesterday!”

“It was I, little sister,” said Prudy, gently. “It was an accident; I’m sorry if I’ve hurt your apron.”

“O, it isn’t hurt any,” replied Dotty, in a different tone; “not a speck, Prudy. But won’t you please button my boots? There, I wish I was a horse, and then my shoes would be nailed on, and be done with it.”

When the boots were buttoned, Dotty was in another flutter.

“Isn’t it time to start yet? What a slow clock! Only eight! I’m going down to help Norah hang out the clothes.”

“Just the napkins and little things, Norah,” said she, suddenly appearing in the back-door yard with her apron half fastened. “I’ll have time before I go to school, and mamma’s always willing.”

“Well, I suppose if you must, you must,” said Norah, trying to talk with a clothespin in her mouth; “but it’s pretty cold weather for little girls like you to be out, with nothing on their heads.”

Dotty took up a handkerchief, shook it once or twice, and spread it on the line; but before she had secured it with a clothespin, it was frozen stiff.

“Why, Norah, what makes you starch the clothes before you put them out? Why don’t you wait till they’re dry?”

“It isn’t starch, Miss Dotty; it’s the cold weather. You’d better run into the house before you freeze.”

“Why, I haven’t hung out but one napkin and two hangerjifs, Norah.”

“No matter; your hands are as red as lobsters; and, another thing, you’re shaking the clothes all to pieces. Did I ever tell you how your sister Prudy was served once, when she was a wee thing, and wouldn’t mind me?”

“Didn’t Prudy always mind? You said she did.”

“Well, no; once Prudy was naughty. I told her to go away from the door, and not touch the frosty nails; but she didn’t pay any heed; and by and by she came crying to me, and do you believe, there were nails sticking to her fingers.”

“Honest? truly?”

“Yes; Prudy remembers it, I know.”

“I mean to go ask her,” said Dotty, dropping a collar and bounding away. “Prudy,” said she, rushing into the house breathless, her cheeks and the tip of her nose glowing with the kisses of the wind. “I’ll tell you something. Did you ever have nails sticking to your fingers?”

“Yes, and I have now,” replied Prudy, holding out her hands, and exhibiting her rosy finger-tips.

“O, those! Why, Prudy Parlin, I think you’re real too-bad, and Norah too! She didn’t want me to spread clo’es; so she told a hint. She’s always telling hints. If I was a Cath’lic, and little girls wanted to hang out clo’es, and make thimble-cookies and things, I wouldn’t treat ’em so, and say there was nails, when I meant fingernails!”

“O, well, Dotty, Norah thinks we are try-patiences, I s’pose. Mother doesn’t allow her to scold, and so she has to manage.”

“H’m!” ejaculated Dotty, with a curling lip. But all this while the “slow clock” was busy.

“Now it is a quarter OF,” said Prudy. She uttered the words as coolly as if they were of very slight importance; but Dotty’s little heart beat like a drum. How often had she heard Prudy say, “It’s a quarter of,” and seen her skip out of the house, kissing her hand for good by! As the door closed after her, Dotty had always felt as if it shut herself out of something beautiful—something every way desirable.

And now it was coming,—the day and the hour. She was about to be a school-girl at last. No longer a little child, who stays at home and plays with paper dolls, but a little woman, who goes out to learn the ways of the world.

As the two children walked on together in advance of Susy, every object looked to Dotty wondrous fair.

“Prudy,” said she, confidentially, “I’ve played enough. I may play a little more once in a while, but not much. I want to grow a great lady, like mamma, and read poetry, and write letters.”

“Yes, dear; but when you get to talking so fast, you keep pushing me into the street with your elbow.”

“Do I? I didn’t mean to. O, how white the world is! Looks like a frosted cake. Prudy, don’t you wish you’s dead?”

“No; what an idea!”

“Nor I don’t, either.”

“Then what made you ask if I did, Dotty Dimple?”

“O, I was only thinking about the angels sifting down snow. Look at the drift top o’ that store. So hard you could jump on it, and not leave a scar.”

“Please, Dotty, keep your elbow still. Here we are at the school-house. Now remember, you must behave like a little lady.”

“Needn’t tell me that, Prudy Parlin. It isn’t as if I was some girls, that don’t know your A B C’s. Six years old—going on seven. Can—”

Dotty was about to say, “Can tie a bow-knot,” and would have added quite a list of other accomplishments; but as she found herself just then in a crowd of little girls, she very prudently closed her lips, and entered the school-room.

“Miss Parker, this is my little sister Alice,” said Prudy, going up to the teacher; “but people know what you mean better if you say ‘Dotty Dimple.’ She has never been to school before; but she can read in the First Reader, if you let her spell the hard words aloud.”

“Very well,” said Miss Parker, with a smile. “I welcome Prudy Parlin’s sister; and if she is half as good as Prudy, I shall never like to part with her to go up stairs.”

Prudy slid her hand into Miss Parker’s. She remembered how that warm-hearted young lady had kissed her with tears when she left the primary department.

“O, I think she’ll be good, Miss Parker,” said Prudy, in a low voice, while Dotty was looking out of the window; “only she never went to school in her life, and if she doesn’t sit very still, I hope you’ll try to excuse her.”

Miss Parker gave the little pleader a hearty embrace.

“Good by Dotty,” said Prudy. “I must leave you now. Remember, when you go out to read, you mustn’t twist your front hair.”

“I never thought of twisting it, or sneezing either. Just’s if—”

But Prudy was gone. Presently the bell rang, and school had begun. Miss Parker gave Dotty a seat beside a little girl in a dark-blue frock, who had eyes the color of gray stocking-yarn, and a dent in her chin so deep that Dotty was rather mortified, for it eclipsed both hers entirely.

“But, then, she isn’t pretty, if she does have such a ’normous dimple, for there’s a wart on her thumb, and I don’t like warts.”

The little girl’s name was Sarah Penny, usually called Tate. She looked at the new scholar with some curiosity. Their eyes met, and then Tate smiled, showing some irregular little teeth. Dotty smiled too, making her dimples as deep as possible. She watched Tate’s chin, and was pleased to observe that the dent never moved. After this silent but friendly greeting, the two children felt a little acquainted.

“She’s a real beauty,” thought the good-natured Tate, gazing at her companion’s lovely face without envy.

“She has zigzag teeth,” thought the critical Miss Dimple; “but I like her.”

Tate opened her Testament, and let Dotty look on with her while Miss Parker read aloud the morning chapter. It was a leather-covered Testament, and had been scratched by penknives.

“I s’pose she’s a poor little girl,” thought Dotty, “or she wouldn’t have such an owdrageous old book! The outside of it’s all wrinkled up—looks like a raisin.”

At this same moment Tate was thinking, “I s’pose SHE’S a rich little girl,—got on a ring!”

Neither of the children, I fear, paid much heed to the reading. Tate turned back to the fly-leaf, and pointed out to Dotty the words in blue ink, “The Property of Isaac S. Penny,” followed by the wonderful couplet,—

Dotty could not read the writing, but was delighted with various hearts and darts, drawn in red ink, and eagles in black, with wings made of loops, and bills made of points. She thought they must have been drawn by a great genius.

After the morning exercises, she sat very prim, and looked straight before her at the blackboard.

“I don’t so much as wink,” thought she. “I wish Prudy could see me now.”

But this unnatural stillness did not last long. Dotty very soon found that her companion had a slate, and she began to make pictures on it, swaying herself to and fro as she drew. Tate looked over Dotty’s shoulders, and watched the pictures as they grew. It puzzled her a little to guess what they were meant for; and, strange to say, the little artist was quite as much puzzled herself.

“What is this thing?” whispered she to Tate. “I made it for a cat; but then, I went and put feathers in the tail, and now I guess it’s a turkey.”

Tate wrinkled her forehead, and eyed the doubtful picture with a wise look.

“It ’pears to me,” replied she, hesitating,—“it ’pears to me more like a tea-pot.”

Now, whispering was against the rule, and Dotty knew it as well as Tate; but they both thought if they put their heads together, and spoke so low that no one else could hear, there was no harm in it. At any rate, so thought Tate, for she had done it so long that her conscience was hardened.

“I’m not whispering to you,” said she to Dotty; “I’m whispering to the slate.”

Dotty stared a little.

“But you spect me to hear,” said she; “so it’s just the same.”

When the time came for the youngest class in the First Reader, Dotty felt a little frightened.

“I can’t read very well,” thought she, “and p’raps the teacher’ll put me down to the bottom of the foot.”

But her fears were groundless; she was placed next to the head; and though the girl above her could read as fast as a stone rolls down hill, Miss Parker said nothing about sending Dotty Dimple to “the bottom of the foot.”

“I have as nice boots as they have, and ruffles round my wrist,” thought the new pupil; “but they are all littler than me, and can read ’thout spelling the words out loud.”

This was very humiliating. Dotty’s curly head sank a little. She stepped out of line, and, closing her book, let it drop by her side.

“Raise your book, Alice, my dear,” said the teacher, kindly, “and keep your finger on the place; that is the proper way.”

“Yes’m,” replied Dotty, demurely, and opened her Reader wrong side upward, at the same time stepping forward several inches in advance of the other girls. Tate Penny tittered a little, and Dotty drew back in a moment.

“My mamma never made me stand in a straight line,” murmured she, “and I don’t know how.”

Miss Parker saw Dotty’s mortification, and hastened to soothe her.

“I dare say you will learn so fast,” said she, “that you will make all these other little girls very much ashamed.”

Dotty looked up, and her eyes brightened. “You never went to school before, I believe.”

“No’m,” replied Dotty, briskly, her unusual bashfulness disappearing in a moment. “No’m, I never; only, when I was at grandpa Parlin’s, I went some days with Jennie Vance. My mamma used to let me read in her lap. You see she couldn’t make me stand up in a row, ’cause I wasn’t but one girl.”

The other children smiled. They thought this must be a very strange child, to talk so familiarly with the teacher.

“Prudy taught me my letters,” she went on: “A for ape, and B for bat—looked as if he had an umberella on him—and C for cat—a story for every one I learned. Prudy told real pretty stories, too. I can remember ’em now. But my mamma didn’t have much time to ’tend to my reading; so she said, after Christmas I must go to your school.”

Miss Parker pressed her lips together firmly—a habit she had when anything amused her. It was very clear to her mind that Miss Dimple did not understand the ways of a school-room. Dotty saw the other little girls looking at one another as if they were amused.

“They like to hear me talk,” thought she, throwing back her curly head. “I’ll talk some more.”

“Miss Parker, may I have a drink of water? ’Cause I’ve been eating snow; and when I eat snow it makes me thirsty. Jennie Vance used to carry a little bottle to school; but her teacher said she mustn’t.”

“Lina Rosenberg, it is your turn to read,” remarked Miss Parker. “We will have no more talking, if you please.”

The new scholar dropped her head, “like violets after rain,” thinking, “O, dear, dear! what have I done now?”