her arms. The kitty was still alive.
Eva Snow had come and let Ninny out of the closet long ago; and lots of
people had been hunting ever since for Flaxie Frizzle. When the
postmaster and the minister brought her home between them, Mrs. Gray was
so very glad that she laughed and cried. Still she thought Flaxie ought
to be punished.
"O mamma," said Miss Frizzle next morning, very much surprised to find
herself tied by the clothes-line to a knob in the bay-window. "The men
laughed to me, they did! Mr. Lame Jones, he said I was very cunning!"
But for all that, her mamma did not untie her till afternoon; and then
Flaxie promised "honestly," not to run away again.
Would you trust her?
FIVE POUNDS OF CINNAMON.
They don't name girls "Roxy," and "Polly," and "Patty," and "Sally,"
nowadays; but when the little miss who is my heroine was a lady, those
short, funny old names were not at all old-fashioned. "Roxy,"
especially, was considered a very sweet name indeed. All these new
names, "Eva," and "Ada," and "Sadie," and "Lillie," and the rest of the
fanciful "ies" were not in vogue. Then, if a romantic, highflown young
mamma wished to give her tiny girl-baby an unusually fine name, she
selected such as "Sophronia," "Matilda," "Lucretia," or "Ophelia." In
extreme cases, the baby could be called "Victoria Adelaide."
In this instance baby's mother was a plain, quiet woman; and she
thought baby's grandmother's name was quite fine enough for baby; and so
baby was called "Roxy," and, when she was ten years old, you would have
thought little Roxy fully as old-fashioned as her name.
_I think it is her clothes_ that makes her image look so funny as she
rises up before me. She herself had brown hair and eyes, and a good
country complexion of milk and roses--such a nice complexion, girls! You
see she had plenty of bread and milk to eat; and a big chamber, big as
the sitting-room down stairs, to sleep in--all windows--and her bed
stood, neat and cool, in the middle of the floor; and she had to walk
ever so far to get anywhere--it was a respectable little run even out to
the barn for the hens' eggs; and it was half a mile to her cousin
Hannah's, and it was three quarters to school, and just a mile to the
very nearest stick of candy or cluster of raisins. Nuts were a little
nearer; for Roxy's father had a noble butternut orchard, and it was as
much a part of the regular farm-work in the fall to gather the
"but'nuts" as
|