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It was really surprising how anxious she was that Jennie should always do right. Now it happened that before the week was out a man came to Mr. Parlin's back door begging. Dotty wondered if it might not be the same man Miss Preston had mentioned, only he was in another suit of clothes. She and Jennie were swinging, with Katie between them, and Susy and Prudy were playing croquet.
No; fathers are glad to give their "best gifts," and the little ones trust them. "It's like sailing in a boat," cried Susy, riding back and forth about the yard in great excitement; "why, it's just as easy as the swing in the oilnut-tree at grandma Parlin's! O, papa, to think I should forget to thank you!" But perhaps Mr. Parlin regarded glowing cheeks and shining eyes as the very best of thanks.
By and by aunt Eastman presented the bride with a bridal rose, which looked as nearly as possible like the one she had given her at the first wedding, and which grew from a slip of the same plant. Dotty could not see the rose, but she heard her aunt say she hoped to attend Mrs. Parlin's Golden Wedding. "I shall be ever so old by that time," thought the little girl.
What would be done here without you to preserve order?" Flyaway could remember as far back as the beginning of the world, that is to say, she could remember when her world began. It is strange to think of, but the first thing she really knew for a certainty, she was standing in a yellow chair, in her grandmother Parlin's kitchen! It was as if she had always been asleep till that minute.
Gray was saying this in Mrs. Gordon's parlor, there was a scene of some confusion in Mr. Parlin's door-yard. "Who's this coming in at the gate?" cried Dotty. It was Deacon, but Deacon was only a part of it; the rest was two meal-bags and a small boy. The meal-bags were full, and hung dangling down on either side of the horse, and to each was tied a leg of little Charlie Gray.
Parlin's face as she listened to these words, though they told her nothing new. "Has you got a pain, gamma?" said little Katie, tenderly. "I did another wickedness, grandma," said Dotty, in a low voice; "I went barefoot, and you never said I might." "Poor little one, you were sorely punished for that," said grandma, kindly.
"No, sir, she isn't; her trunk came, but she didn't." There was no information to be obtained at the Prossers'; so Mr. Parlin went to Mr. Lawrence's, the nearest neighbor on the right, making the same inquiries; but all he learned was, that a carriage had been seen standing at Mr. Parlin's door; who had gone away in it nobody could tell.
"My dee gamma, I so solly you's sick!" said she, stroking Mrs. Parlin's face, and picking open her eyelids. But after patting and "pooring" the dear lady for some time, she thought she had made her "all well," and then was anxious to get away. Mrs. Parlin wished to keep her up stairs as long as possible, because Ruth had a toothache. "Shan't I tell you a story, dear?" said she.
Three weeks afterwards the "Oriole" drove up to grandpapa Parlin's again, and this time for the Cliffords. Flyaway danced into it like a piece of thistle-down. Everybody threw good-by kisses, and the stage rattled away. And after that, dears, as Flyaway will say to her grandchildren, "things went into a mist."
As soon as her dress-maker could spare her, and a troublesome little cousin had left, she asked permission to go to Mrs. Parlin's. "Dotty thinks I meant to keep it," she thought. "I never did see such a girl. You can't say the least little thing but she takes it sober earnest, and says she'll tell her grandmother." Jennie stole round by the back door, and timidly asked for Miss Dimple.
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