like potatoes.

"Sometimes I think, Dotty, you'd be as good and nice as a
summer-sweeting, if you wouldn't play with naughty children, like Lina
Rosenberg; but if you do, you'll be like a potato, as true as you live.

"Finis."

CHAPTER IX.

THANKSGIVING DAY.

The next day was Thanksgiving. Dotty wakened in such a happy mood that it
seemed to her the world had never looked so bright before.

"I don't think, Prudy, it's the turkey and plum pudding we're going to
have that makes me so happy--do you?"

"What is it, then, little sister?"

"O, it's 'cause I dreamed I was sleeping on pin-feathers, and woke up and
found I wasn't. You'd feel a great deal better, Prudy, if you'd run away
and had such a dreadful time, and got home again."

"I don't want to try it," returned Prudy, with a smile.

"No; but it's so nice to be forgiven!" said Dotty, laying her hand on her
heart, "it makes you feel so easy right in here."

A fear came over Prudy that the little runaway had not been punished
enough. But Dotty went on:--

"It makes you feel as if you'd never be naughty again. Now, if my mamma
was always thumping me with a thimble, and scolding me so as to shake the
house, I shouldn't care; but when she is just like an angel, and forgives
me, I _do_ care."

"I'm so glad, Dotty! I think, honestly, mother's the best woman that
ever lived."

"Then why didn't she marry the best man?" asked Dotty, quickly.

"Who is that?"

"Why, Abraham Lincoln, of course." Prudy laughed.

"Yes; I suppose Mr. Lincoln was the best man that ever lived; but papa
comes next."

"Yes," said Dotty; "I think he does. And I'd rather have him for a father
than Mr. Lincoln, 'cause I'm better 'quainted with him. I shouldn't dare
kiss the President. And, besides that, he's dead."

"You're a funny girl, Dotty; but what you say is true. Everything happens
just right in this world."

"Does it?" said Dotty, wrinkling her brows anxiously; "does it,
now truly?"

"Yes, indeed, Dotty. Anybody wouldn't think so, but it does."

"Then I suppose it happens right for me to be a bad girl and run away."

"No, indeed, Dotty; because you can help it. Everything is right that we
_can't_ help; that's what I mean."

"Then I s'pose 'twas right for me to crawl through the cellar window,"
said Dotty; "for I'm sure I couldn't help it"

"O, dear me! you ask such queer questions that I can't answer them, Dotty
Dimple. All I know is this: everything happens j