DOTTY DIMPLE AT SCHOOL.

By SOPHIE MAY, AUTHOR OF “LITTLE PRUDY STORIES.”

Illustrated.

BOSTON: LEE AND SHEPARD. 1869.

[2]

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by

LEE AND SHEPARD,

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

ELECTROTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY, 19 Spring Lane.

[3]

TO ATTIE STARBIRD AND KATIE WHEELER.

[4]

DOTTY DIMPLE STORIES.

To be completed in six vols. Handsomely Illustrated.

Each vol., 75 cts.

1. DOTTY DIMPLE AT HER GRANDMOTHER’S. 2. DOTTY DIMPLE AT HOME. 3. DOTTY DIMPLE OUT WEST. 4. DOTTY DIMPLE AT PLAY. 5. DOTTY DIMPLE AT SCHOOL. 6. DOTTY DIMPLE’S FLYAWAY.

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

LITTLE PRUDY STORIES.

Now complete. Six vols. 24mo. Handsomely Illustrated.

In a neat box. Per vol., 75 cts. Comprising

1. LITTLE PRUDY. 2. LITTLE PRUDY’S SISTER SUSY. 3. LITTLE PRUDY’S CAPTAIN HORACE. 4. LITTLE PRUDY’S COUSIN GRACE. 5. LITTLE PRUDY’S STORY BOOK. 6. LITTLE PRUDY’S DOTTY DIMPLE.

[5]

CONTENTS.

[6]

[7]

DOTTY DIMPLE AT SCHOOL.

CHAPTER I. THE FIRST DAY.

“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.”

[8]

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[9] 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.”

[10]

“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!”

[11]

“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,[12] 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?”

[13]

“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;[14] “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.

[15]

“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[16] 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.”

[17]

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,—

“If you don’t believe this book is mine, Please look on page thirty-nine.”

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.

[18]

“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.”

[19]

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[20] 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[21] 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.”

[22]

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,[23] 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?”

[24]

CHAPTER II. DOTTY AND TATE.

“Well, little sister,” said Prudy that evening, “how do you like going to school?”

“I don’t know anything about it; you ask too many questions,” replied the child, turning away suddenly.

“O, Dotty! I hope you haven’t been a bad girl. Did Miss Parker have to speak to you?”

“She spoke to me—yes; what you s’pose?”

“Did you and that little Penny girl whisper, Dotty?”

“Yes. She talked to the slate, but she meant me.”

[25]

“O, Dotty! And you answered back?”

“H’m, Prudy! D’you think I’se going to sit there and not say anything, and her a talking to me the whole time?”

“She’s going to act awfully, I’m afraid,” thought poor Prudy, who felt the whole care of her little sister on her own young shoulders.

“You didn’t twirl your hair, and talk in the class, Dotty?”

Dotty stooped to pick up a pin which was not on the carpet.

“O, Prudy! I’m going to get me some paper, and oil it, and put it over pictures, and it’ll draw splendid! With butter, you know! Shines through.”

Prudy saw the flush of shame on her sister’s cheeks, but did not know how keenly she was suffering.

“I wouldn’t tell Prudy how the girls[26] laughed at me, and thought I was a nidiot. And the teacher too, I saw her laughing, inside of her sleeves. Every time I think of it I want to shut myself up in the closet.”

“How did you like your school, Alice,” said Mr. Parlin, as the family were all seated in the parlor after tea.

“Pretty well, sir,” answered Dotty, faintly. “There was a man came in and talked. He said he learned his letters with a whalebone. I mean his teacher snipped him with it.”

“It was the same man,” said Prudy, “that came up stairs and talked to us. I guess he was a printer, for he told a story, and he said, ‘The man approached the child, and found her weeping.’ If he hadn’t been a printer he wouldn’t have said that; he’d have said, ‘The man went up to the child and found she was crying.’”

[27]

“What do you mean by a printer, Prudy?”

“O, these men that write books, papa. They always use all the big words—don’t they?”

Dotty was much obliged to her kind sister for leading the conversation away from the primary school, for she had been afraid some one might strike in with an awkward question.

“O, dear! I hoped I was going to have the sore throat,” thought she, as she awoke next morning; “and then I could stay away from school. But nothing pleasant ever happens to me. When I want the sore throat, I can’t have it; and when I don’t want it, that’s the very time it comes.”

For several days Dotty continued to feel unhappy, and hardly dared play with the other little girls, lest they should laugh at her. But by degrees her sensitiveness wore[28] away, and after practising on her lessons at home till she could read without stumbling over the hard words, she became the gayest of the gay.

She drew her sled to school nearly every day, for there was enough dirty snow and ice in the yard to afford a little coasting. Several of the other children had sleds, but Lina Rosenberg had none, and, remembering the former friendship between herself and Dotty, followed her like her shadow, begging for rides.

Dotty bore this for a while; but at last her patience gave way.

“Lina Rosenbug,” said she with dignity, “some days I can let you ride, and some days it may not be convenient for me to do so. I should devise you not to tease.”

Lina pouted.

“My mother says you’re a big-feeling little[29] girl,” cried she. “You wouldn’t stay to my house; you ran home, and crawled into the cellar; you know you did.”

“Yes,” retorted Dotty, “’cause my mamma didn’t wish me to play with you, and I knew it. That’s why I’d rather stay down cellar. She said you betwitched me, Lina Rosenbug.”

Dotty was sorry, next minute, that she had spoken so unkindly.

“Now Lina never’ll speak to me again,” thought she. “Would I play with a little girl when her mamma said I betwitched her?”

But Dotty was quite mistaken. Lina had heard cross words all her little life, and was hardened to them. She clung to Miss Dimple only the more closely after this; which was a pity, for Dotty was really anxious to obey her mother, and keep away from the beguiling little Jewess.

[30]

Meanwhile Dotty was becoming rather intimate with her young seat-mate. She knew precisely how many dresses Tate had, and how many she expected to have; the names of her uncles and aunts; which were the good ones, that gave presents, and which were the cross ones, that made you shut the doors after you, and said, “O, she can skip up stairs and get my cap-box; she’s just big enough to run.”

In her turn Dotty related all her own adventures, both by sea and land, Tate listening with a quick twinkle of her large gray eyes, which was very encouraging.

Dotty did not spend all her time in whispering: she sometimes tried to study; but it was very hard to fix her thoughts. She would repeat a word again and again, and all the while be thinking of something else; or she would mean to look at her book, and,[31] instead of that, find herself watching Miss Parker, or counting the buttons on some little girl’s frock.

Now, it happened that Miss Parker, though a fine teacher, and an excellent young lady, had one very foolish method; and it was this.

In the afternoon, before the school was dismissed, she asked the children to tell her if they had whispered during the day; and if they declared they had not, she smiled, and seemed very much pleased. All this would have been well enough, if the little creatures had told the truth; but, alas! they were so anxious for their teacher’s smile, that they often, very often, told falsehoods.

Miss Parker had no idea she was tempting them to do wrong. She believed every word they said. If she had been more observing, she might have known that the children, who[32] looked so innocent, were really sad little chatterboxes. Dotty Dimple was amazed to see Tate’s hand go up every night in token that she had not whispered.

“Why, Tate,” said she one day, “you’re just as bad as Jennie Vance! She lies, ‘one to another,’ and so do you!”

Tate looked grieved.

“O, Dotty Dimple! I don’t do any such a thing!”