Dot called after her:

"Where are you going, Tess?" the latter had said very frankly, "Where
_you_ can't go," and then went right on without stopping for a moment to
argue the point.

"I do think that is too mean for anything!" declared Dot to herself,
quite too angry to cry. She sat sullenly on the porch steps, and
although she heard Sandyface purring very loudly and suggestively, just
inside the woodshed door, she would not get up to go to see the old
cat's babies--of which Sandyface was inordinately proud.

"Wait," ruminated Dot, shaking her head. "Wait till Tess Kenway wants me
to go somewhere with her. _I won't go!_ There, now!"

So she sat, feeling very lonesome and miserable, and "enjoying" it
immensely. She need not have been lonely. She could hear the older girls
and Luke laughing in the front of the house, and she would have been
welcomed had she gone there. Ruth was always a comforter, and even Agnes
seldom said the smallest girl nay.

But Dot had managed to raise a laugh a little while before--she being
the person laughed at. She chanced to hear Luke, who was running lightly
over the old and yellowed keys of the piano, say:

"No wonder these instruments cost so much. You know it takes several
elephants alone to make these," and he struck another chord.

Dot had heard about the intelligence of elephants and like most other
little people believed that the great pachyderms could do almost
anything. But this was too much for even Dot Kenway's belief.

"Oh, Ruth! elephants can't work at that trade, can they?" she demanded.

"What trade, honey?" asked the surprised older sister.

"Piano making. I should think that carpenters built pianos--not
elephants."

Of course, the older ones had laughed, and Dot's spirits had fallen
another degree, although Ruth was careful to explain to the little girl
that Luke had meant it took the tusks of several elephants to fashion
the ivory keys for one piano.

However, Dot was in no mood for "tagging" after the older ones. She
just wanted to sit still and suffer! She heard Mabel Creamer
"hoo-hooing" for her from beyond the yard fence, but she would not
answer. Had it not been for the Alice-doll (which of course she hugged
tight to her troubled little breast) life would have scarcely seemed
worth living to the smallest Corner House girl.

And just then she looked up and saw a picture across the street even
more woe-begone than the one she herself made. It was Sammy Pi