I know how it happened, too.  It came of eating sausages.  Mrs. Rosenberg, after she was fairly awake, felt so uncomfortable and oppressed that she went up stairs to see if the children were safe.  Really, I do suppose those little human souls were precious to her, after all.

There lay Mandoline and Dotty side by side on the buffalo skins; and the Jewish mother stood in her short night-dress, with a tallow candle in her hand, and gazed at them tenderly.  That horrible dream had stirred the fountain of love in her heart They made a beautiful picture, and there was no stain of evil in their young faces.  It seems as if the angel of Sleep flies away with loads of naughtiness, for he always leaves sleeping children looking very innocent.  But, alas! he brings back next morning all he carried away, for the little ones wake up with just as bad hearts as ever.

“What sweet little creeters!” said Mrs. Rosenberg, bending over and kissing them both; “just like seraphims right out of the clouds.”

Softly, madam!  If a drop of tallow should fall on them from that candle, they might take to themselves wings and fly away.  That was what Cupid did in the fairy story, and you are in fairy-land yourself, Mrs. Rosenberg; you are still half asleep.

She looked at Mandoline’s perfect little hand, lying outside the patchwork quilt.

“It doesn’t seem, now,” murmured the mother, with a tear in her eye, “that I could ever whack them pretty fingers with a thimble.  I do believe if I wasn’t pestered to death with everything under the sun to do, I might be kind o’ half-way decent.”

Perhaps the poor woman told the truth; I think she did.

Then, as she stood there, she breathed a little prayer without any words, ­not for herself ­for she did not suppose God would hear that, ­but for her children that she “banged about” every day of their lives.

She was not really a Jewess, for she had no religion of any sort, and never went to church; but I am sure of one thing:  little overworked Mandoline would have loved her mother better if she had known she ever prayed for her at all.

In the morning, Mrs. Rosenberg was just as hard and sharp as ever; she could not stop to be pleasant.  Dotty longed to get away; but she was an exile from her own dear home; whither could she turn?

It was a cold morning, and the children ran down stairs half dressed and shivering.  Dotty spread out her stiff, red fingers before the cooking-stove like the sticks of a fan.  “O, hum!” thought she, drearily, “I wish I could see the red coals in our grate.  My mamma wouldn’t let me go to the table with such hair as this.  Prudy’d say ’twas ‘harum scarum.’  But I can’t brush it with a tooth-comb, ’thout any glass ­so there!”

Dotty’s curly hair looked quite as respectable as Mandoline’s.  Mrs. Rosenberg was far too busy to attend to her children’s heads.  They might be rough on the outside, and full of mischief inside; but she could not stop to inquire.

“What a dreadful nice breakfast!” remarked Judith, rubbing her hands, and accidentally hitting little Jacob, who forthwith spilled some molasses on the clean table-cloth, and had his ears boxed in consequence.  It was very evident that this meal was a much better one than usual ­a sort of festival in honor of Dotty Dimple:  Dutch cheese and pickles, mince-pie and gingerbread, pepper-boxes and green and yellow dishes, were mixed up together as if they had been stirred about with a spoon.

Dotty had not intended to eat a mouthful; but after her light supper of the night before, she was really hungry, and, in spite of her best resolves, the fish-hash and corncake gradually disappeared from her plate.

After breakfast she felt more resigned, and armed herself to meet her fate.  Mrs. Rosenberg graciously allowed Mandoline to lay aside her tedious knitting, and give her undivided attention to her guest.  Dotty had no heart for play.

“Seems as if I should choke in this house,” said she; “let’s go out and breathe.”

The air inside the house was rather stifling from a mixture of odors, and soon the grocery began to fill with loud-talking men and boys; but not the least of Dotty’s troubles was the black and tan dog, who seemed to have just such a temper as Mrs. Rosenberg, and would certainly have scolded if he had had the gift of speech.

The two little girls went out to walk; but it was not a pleasant street where the grocery stood, and Dotty hurried on to a better part of the town.  They fluttered about for two or three hours, as aimless as a couple of white butterflies.  Just as they were turning to go back to the dismal little grocery, which Dotty thought was more like a lock-up than ever, they met Mr. and Mrs. Parlin riding out in a carriage.

Dotty felt a sudden tumult of joy and shame, but the joy was uppermost.  She rushed headlong across the street, swinging her arms and startling the horse, who supposed she was some new and improved kind of windmill, dressed up in a little girl’s clothes.

“O, my darling mamma, my darling mamma!”

To her surprise, the horse did not stop.  He only pricked up his ears, and looked with displeasure at the windmill, but kept along as before.

“Mamma, mamma, I say!”

Her mother never even looked at her, but turned her gaze to the blackened trees, the heaps of ruin along the pavement.

“O; papa!  O, stop, papa!  It’s me!  It’s Dotty!”

Mr. Parlin bent on his runaway daughter a glance of indifference, and called out, in passing, ­

“What strange little girl is this, who seems to know us so well?  It looks like my daughter Alice.  If it is, she needn’t come to my house to-day; she may go and finish her visit at Mrs. Rosenberg’s.”

Then the horse trotted on, ­indeed, he had never paused a moment, ­and carried both those dear, dear people out of sight.

What did they mean?  What had happened to Dotty Dimple, that her own father and mother did not know her?

She looked down at the skirt of her dress, at her gaiters, at her little bare hands, to make sure no wicked fairy had changed her.  Not that she suspected any such thing.  She understood but too well what her father and mother meant.  They knew her, but had not chosen to recognize her, because they were displeased.

Dotty’s little heart, the swelling of which had net gone down at all during the night, now ached terribly.  She covered her face with her hands, and groaned aloud.

“Don’t,” said Mandoline, touched with pity.  “They no business to treat you so.”

“O, Lina, don’t you talk!  You don’t know anything about it.  You never had such a father’n mother’s they are!  And now they won’t let me come into the house!”

This wail of despair would have melted Mrs. Parlin if she could have heard it.  It was only because she thought it necessary to be severe that she had consented to do as her husband advised, and turn coldly away from her dear little daughter.  Dotty was a loving child, in spite of her disobedience, and this treatment was almost more than she could bear.  She found no consolation in talking with Lina, for she knew Lina could not understand her feelings.

“She hasn’t any Susy and Prudy at her house, nor no anything” thought Dotty.  “If I lived with Mrs. Rosenberg and that dog, I’d want to be locked out; I’d ask if I couldn’t.  But, O, my darling mamma!  I’ve been naughty too many times!  When I’d been naughty fifty, sixty, five hundred times, then she forgave me; but now she can’t forgive me any more; it isn’t possible.”

Dotty staggered against a girl who was drawing a baby-carriage, but recovered herself.

“It isn’t possible to forgive me any more.  She told me not to go on the water, and I went.  She told me not to have temper, and I had it.  Every single thing she’s told me not to do, I always went and did it.  She said, ‘I do not wish you to play with Lina Rosenberg;’ and then I went right off and played with her.  I didn’t have a bit good time; but that’s nothing.  She hided my hat ­Lina did; but if I’d gone home, straight home, and not gone to her house, then she couldn’t have hided it.

“I was naughty; I was real naughty; I was as naughty as King Herod and King Pharaoh.  Nobody’ll ever love me.  I’m a poor orphanless child!  I’ve got a father’n mother, but it’s just the same as if I didn’t, for they won’t let me call ’em by it.  O, they didn’t die, but they won’t be any father’n mother to ME!

“‘What strange little girl is this?’ that’s what my papa said. ’_ Looks_ like my daughter Alice!’ O, I wish I could die!”

“Come, come,” said Lina; “let’s go home.  Mother said you and I might have some macaroni cakes and lager beer, if we wouldn’t let the rest of ’em see us at it.”

“I don’t care anything about your locker beer, Lina Rosenberg, nor your whiskey and tobacco pipes, either.  Nor neither, nor nothing,” added the desolate child, standing “stock still,” with the back of her head against a pile of bricks, her eyes closed, and her hands folded across her bosom.

“There, there; you’re a pretty sight now, Dotty Dimple!  What if you should freeze so!  Come along and behave.”

“I can’t, I can’t!”

“If you don’t, Dotty, I’ll have to go into that barber’s shop.  I know the man, and I’ll make him carry you home piggerback”

“Well, if I’ve got to go, I’ll go,” said Dotty, rousing herself, and starting; “but I’d rather be dead, over’n over; and wish I was; so there!”