down his paper and drawing
her onto his knee, while the rest of the family prepared to give the
customary amused attention to their youngest's remarks.

[Illustration: "'YOU KNOW SCHOOL BEGINS NEXT WEEK,' SAID DOROTHEA."]

"Well, when Cousin Edith went to Europe we all gave her presents to take
with her, and when she came home lots of people sent her flowers.
Anita's been getting cups and things ever since she was engaged, and
last spring, when Florence graduated, almost all the family gave her
something; and when Mary Bowman was confirmed she got a lovely white
prayer-book and a gold cross and chain. But when people are going to do
what they hate to do, they're left out in the cold."

"What are you going to do that you don't like, Baby?" asked Florence.

"Why, you know, school begins again next week," said Dorothea. "It makes
me feel quite mournful, and I don't see anything to cheer me up and make
it interesting for me." A little smile was hidden in the corners of her
mouth although her tone was as doleful as possible.

"If you were going to boarding-school--" began Anita, who was apt to
take everything seriously.

"Then I'd have lots of things," interrupted Dorothea. "New clothes and a
trunk and a bag, and you'd all come to see me off, and it would be
interesting. But I'm going to work just as hard here at day-school, and
yet I've got to bear it, all by myself."

Her father pinched her ear, and her big brother Jim offered to have a
bunch of roses placed on her desk at school if that would make her feel
better, while her two sisters looked at each other as though the same
idea had occurred to them both.

* * *

On the morning of the first day of school, Dorothea was suddenly
awakened by a loud ting-a-ling-a-ling. She sat up in bed and rubbed her
eyes. The room was flooded with morning light and the brass knobs on her
bed gleamed cheerfully at her and seemed to say: "Get up, get up!" Now
Dorothea was a "sleepyhead" and had seldom been known to get up when
first awakened. It usually took at least three calls from her mother or
the girls, and sometimes Jim stole in and administered a "cold pig,"
that is, a few drops of chilly water squeezed upon her neck from a
sponge, before she was ready to leave her comfortable bed.

"It's an alarm clock," thought Dorothea. "But where is it?" Her eyes
traveled sleepily around the room but saw nothing that had not been
there the night before. The ting-a-