The alum gave Dotty’s mouth a puckery sensation; though, to her disappointment, she felt as much like talking as ever.

“But, Tate,” said she, firmly, “I’m going to be good all day, as hard as I can; and I devise you not to try to make me speak.”

This was before school began, and shortly afterwards Tate forgot the admonition, and fell to whispering, just as usual.

“Dotty, there’s a boy,—his name’s Daniel Page,—and he goes to church right before our pew. He acts awfully. Did you ever see Dannie?”

Dotty shook her head.

“Didn’t you truly?”

Dotty shook her head again.

“Why, he lives on next to the same street you do. Didn’t you never see him?”

Dotty shook her head with treble force.

“’Cause I was going to tell you what he did last Sunday. Do you want to hear?”

Miss Dimple’s head shook as if she had the palsy.

“Well, I’m going to tell you, anyway, it was so queer. The minister he prayed, and Dannie he stood up, and turned round, and looked at me. And what do you s’pose he put into his mouth?”

Dotty was growing interested; thought of pea-nuts, taffy, licorice; but made no reply except to scowl as severely as possible.

“His hankychiff! Yes, it was. It had red pictures over it—a lion and a man; and he stuffed it right in.”

Dotty wanted to say, “Not the whole!” but shut her teeth together.

Tate proceeded.

“He poked and he poked, and he stretched his mouth open, and it kept going in, and bimeby ’twas all in, and the hem too—the whole hankychiff.”

Dotty’s eyes were big with astonishment.

“Yes, I saw it. His cheeks stuck out both sides, and his eyes too. I thought he was going to choke to death; and then I laughed!”

The recollection was so amusing that Tate hid behind her slate, and shook all over, while Dotty tried so hard to keep sober, that she tittered outright. Miss Parker frowned. This was a bad beginning. Dotty wished it was nine o’clock, and she could start again.

“What’s the matter with you, Dotty Dimple?” said Tate. “You look as if you didn’t feel pleasant.”

Dotty thought there was no peace for her, and began to shake her head again in despair. The more Tate talked, the more she shook it; and while it was going like a tree in the wind, and she was bending on her friend a feebly furious scowl, Miss Parker drew near.

“Why, Dotty, I am astonished,” said she, with marked displeasure; “what makes you behave so strangely to-day? You keep jerking your neck as if you meant to break it off. The children are watching you, and laughing.”

Dotty tried to make an excuse, but could not think of any, and her silence seemed to Miss Parker like sullenness.

“O, dear, dear!” thought the unfortunate child, “she thinks I mean to be naughty; and it’s just ’cause I try so dreadfully to be good! It’s no use! I may eat all the alum there is in the milliners’ shops, and it don’t do anything to my tongue. If it did, it’s no use. Miss Parker never scolded when I whispered, and now when I don’t whisper, she does!”

This was a very unpleasant reflection; it confused the child’s ideas of right and wrong.

“It’s ’cause I want to please Miss Parker, that I said I wouldn’t whisper; but it doesn’t please her—it displeases her. She’ll never love me ’thout she’s a mind to, and I don’t mean to try.”

So, when the teacher had passed down the aisle, and was hearing the primer class, Dotty turned round to Tate, and said, with a reckless smile,—

“Talk away, Tate. I give it up.”

“I thought you’d give it up,” replied Tate, triumphantly.

“O, I needn’t if I didn’t choose. I needn’t speak forever ’n’ ever, and you couldn’t get the blade of a knife in ’tween my teeth. But I shan’t; what’s the use, and her looking the other way?”

“That’s what I always told you,” said Tate; “but you scolded, and said I was a naughty girl.”

“Well, so you are; and I’ll say it again, ’cause it’s the truth. You, a-holding up your hand, and Miss Parker a-thinking you the best kind of a girl, Tate Penny! But I’m going to be naughty, too. She praises the naughty ones. O, yes; don’t she praise ’em? and we good ones—O, it makes me feel cross!”

After Dotty had said this, it seemed to her she had excused herself to her own conscience, and could go on whispering as much as she pleased. She and Tate had never whispered so much before. They watched every opportunity, when Miss Parker was busy, to keep their little tongues moving. Never did a pair of sociable pigeons, building a nest in the spring, chat more eagerly than these two children, with their heads close together, and their fingers intertwined. Every time Miss Parker happened to look that way, they were studying very hard; and she smiled, as if to say, “Good little girls! Dear little girls!”

“Very queer,” thought Dotty; “she says it’s against rules to whisper, but we can do it ’thout her scolding the leastest bit.”

“Yes,” replied Tate, “if I couldn’t see any better’n Miss Parker can, I’d wear spettycles.”

“But she sees us when we do things she never told us not to, and not breaking rules at all,” said Dotty, scornfully. “For ninstance, she saw me shaking my head. Now, why couldn’t I shake my head? That isn’t against the rule!”

“No, indeed!”

“Well, but she came straight up here, and said she was ’stonished. What made her ’stonished, when I wasn’t breaking a rule?”

“She was afraid you’d break your neck,” said Tate.

The day wore on, and Dotty grew more and more reckless.

“I’ve a great mind to hold up my hand to-night,” thought she; but could not quite decide to do it. She was so busy debating the question that she hardly noticed when her spelling-class was called, and walked out behind Tate like one in a dream.

After the spelling, there came, as usual, the awful question,—

“How many have whispered to-day? All those who have not whispered may hold up their hands.”

Dotty saw Tate’s hand go up fearlessly, as it always did. Why not hers too?

“If I’m some bad, I might as well be all bad.”

Dotty gave one glance at Miss Parker’s red ear-rings, one glance of shame at her own boots, and then began to raise her left arm slowly, slowly, for something seemed to hold it down. It felt as heavy as an iron weight. She almost needed the other hand to help her draw it up. At the same time something knocked loudly at her heart, “Stop! stop! stop!”

But the arm got up at last, and nobody saw that it was as stiff as marble; it looked like the other arms that were raised, only it was in a sleeve that had a crimped ruffle round the wrist.

Miss Parker saw Dotty’s hand, and her beautiful mouth was wreathed with smiles.

“Ah,” cried she, “that is just what I’ve been wanting to see! I have looked in vain for that little hand.”

Dotty gazed at a crack in the floor; for she could not meet her teacher’s eye.

“My dear child,” added Miss Parker, stroking Dotty’s hair, “don’t you feel a great deal happier to-night than usual? a great deal lighter-hearted? You don’t know how this makes me love you, dear.”

There it was; the praise of her teacher! Just what she had been longing for so much. But why didn’t it make her happy? Happy! She was one mass of misery from head to foot. When Miss Parker kissed her so tenderly for good by, she wanted to scream, for the kiss “burnt her mouth.”

“There,” cried Tate, as they left the school-room, “aren’t you glad you did it?”

“No, indeed,” said Dotty, turning round upon her friend in a sort of frenzy, and shooting out the words like pins and needles. “What you s’pose? I should think you’d be ’shamed, Tate Penny; so ’shamed you’d want to die! Telling me to hold my hand up, when it’s a bommernibble big black lie.”

“You needn’t to’ve done it,” returned Tate, cowering before the lightning in Dotty’s eyes.

“You’re the wickedest girl there is in this town,” went on the angry child. “Made me whisper, when I ate alum to purpose not to! Keep a-talking so I had to shake my head and make the scholars see it, and get scolded at! And then you devised me to tell a lie! I feel it coming up into my throat, Tate Penny; it chokes me so I can’t talk. It’s worse’n if I’d said it. When you do a lie, it’s a great deal worse.”

Tate was too much overwhelmed to reply.

“But I know one thing,” cried Dotty, setting her heels down firmly; “God won’t blame me. He’ll blame YOU. You go right home, and think how you’ve been acting, Tate Penny! And to-night, when you go to bed, you pray just as hard as you can!”

These words came out in a sudden gust. “Just as hard as you can, Tate Penny, for you’re the one’s been wicked; not me!”

Then, without a word of farewell, the children parted, Tate turning to the left with a puzzled look, as if she really did not know whether she was wicked or not, and Dotty turning to the right, her heart and throat full of choking sobs without any tears.