f in the pantry to dry.

"Oho!" said she, shaking her wet plumage, like a duckling; "what for
you look that way to me? I didn't do nuffin,--not the leastest nuffin!
The water kep' a comin' and a comin'."

"Yes, you little naughty girl, and you kept pumping and pumping."

"I'm isn't little naughty goorl," thought Katie, indignantly; "but
Ruthie's naughty goorl, and Hollis _velly_ naughty goorl."

"O, here you are, you little Hop-o'-my-thumb," said Mrs. Clifford,
coming into the pantry; "a baby with a cough in her throat and pills
in her pocket musn't get wet."

Flyaway thrust her hand into her wet pocket to make sure the wee vial
of white dots was still there.

"I fished her out of a pail of water," said Horace; "to-morrow I shall
find her in a bird's nest."

Mrs. Clifford sent for some fresh stockings and shoes. Her
baby-daughter was so often falling into mischief that she thought very
little about it. She did not know this was a remarkable occasion, and
the baby had to-day begun to remember. She did not know that if
Flyaway should live to be an old lady, she would sometimes say to her
grandchildren,--

"The very first thing I have any recollection of, dears, is grinding
coffee in your great-grandmamma's kitchen at Willowbrook. The girl,
Ruth Dillon, took me up by the shoulders, carried me through the air,
and set me in the sink, and then I pumped water over myself."

This is about the way little Flyaway would be likely to talk, sixty
years from now, adding, as she polished her spectacles,--

"And after that, children, things went into a mist, and I don't
remember anything else that happened for some time."

Why was it that things "went into a mist"? Why didn't she keep on
remembering every day? I don't know.

But the next thing that really did happen to Miss Thistleblow Flyaway,
though she went right off and forgot it, was this: She persuaded her
mother to write a letter for her to "Dotty Dimpwill." As it was her
first letter, I will copy it.

"MY DEAR DOTTY DIMPWILL first, then MY PRUDY:

"I'm going to say that I dink milk, and that girl lost my
pills.

"I see a hop-toad. He hopped. Jennie took _her_ up in _his_
dress.

"And 'bout we put hop-toad in wash-dish. He put his foots
out, _stwetched_, honest! He was a slippy fellow. First
thing we knowed it, he hopped on to her dress. Isn't that
funny?

"Now 'bout the chickens; they are trottin' round o