“Sit still, Prudy, just as you are.  The moon is shining into the window, on your tears, and it seems as if I could almost see a rainbow in your eyes!—­There, it’s gone now.  What makes you talk so queer about God, Prudy? as if you knew a great deal more than I do?”

“I don’t know half as much as you do,” replied Prudy; “but I used to lie and think about the Saviour when I had the lameness.—­Hark!  Is that Dotty laughing?  Let’s go in and see if she isn’t ’most well.”

The child was indeed better; but for the next three nights she suffered from severe attacks of the croup.  Her sisters had not known how they loved her till she showed her frail side, and they saw how slender was the thread which bound her to earth.  When she was strong, and roguish, and wilful, they forgot that she was only a tender flower after all, and might be nipped from the stem any time.

When she was well again, Prudy said to her mother, in confidence, “It didn’t kill her, the croup didn’t, but it might have killed her; and I’m going to love her all the time as if she was really dead, and gone to heaven.”

CHAPTER XI.

BUYING A BROTHER.

“One, two, buckle my slipper! no, my gaiters,” repeated Miss Dimple, as Prudy laced her boots.  “I wish I was a horse, then my shoes would be nailed on, and be done with it.”

“I’m so glad,” said Prudy, putting on her hat, “that we can go to housekeeping again.”

They had built a shingle palace on the bank of the river.  It was as white as chalk could make it, and glared like a snowdrift out of a clump of evergreens which were no taller than dandelions.

“Our house is shaded so much,” said Prudy, “that it makes me think of a lady with hair over her eyes.”

The entrance to the little palace was through a swinging door, of white cloth, and from the roof fluttered a small flag.  There were four rooms in the house, all of them on the ground floor.  The parlor was elegantly furnished with a braided carpet, of striped grass, a piano, whose black and white keys were put on with coal and chalk, not to mention other articles of luxury.  The table was spread with acorn-cups and poppy teapots, the little housekeepers being advised not to make use of their china dishes for this establishment.

There was a very black stove in the kitchen, but the most of the cooking was done out of doors, farther down the bank, in ovens shaped like swallows’ nests.  Here were baked delicious mud cakes, tempting currant tarts, and dainty custards.

Nothing pleased Miss Dimple so well as to govern a household.  She ruled with a rod of iron.

In the midst of a caution to her servant-maid, Prudy, “not to burn her biscuits as black as so’-leather,” she was surprised to see her twinkling off a tear.

“O, Prudy, I didn’t mean to scold,” said she, in the tenderest tones.