Parlin had to think a few minutes.

"Yes, Charlie," said she, at last; "you may have the milk, because I
would like to oblige your mother; and you may tell her I will send it
every night by the children."

Now, Mrs. Gray was the doctor's wife. She was a kind woman, and kept one
closet shelf full of canned fruit and jellies for sick people; but for
all that, the children did not like her very well. Prudy thought it
might be because her nose turned up "like the nose of a tea-kettle;" but
Susy said it was because she asked so many questions. If the little
Parlins met her on the street when they went of an errand, she always
stopped them to inquire what they had been buying at the store, or took
their parcels out of their hands and felt them with her fingers. She was
interested in very little things, and knew how all the parlors in town
were papered and carpeted, and what sort of cooking-stoves everybody
used.

Dotty hung her head when her grandmother said she wished her to go every
night to Mrs. Gray's with a quart of milk.

"Must I?" said she. "Why, grandma, she'll ask me if my mother keeps a
girl, and how many teaspoons we've got in the house; she will, honestly.
Mayn't somebody go with me?"

"Ask me will I go?" said Katie, "for I love to shake my head!"

"And, grandma," added Dotty, "Mrs. Gray's eyes are so sharp, why,
they're so sharp they almost prick! And it's no use for Katie to go with
me, she's so little."

"O, I'm isn't _much_ little," cried Katie. "I's growing big."

"I should think Prudy might go," said Dotty Dimple, with her finger in
her mouth; "you don't make Prudy do a single thing!"

"Prudy goes for the ice every morning," replied Mrs. Parlin. "I wish you
to do as I ask you, Alice, and make no more remarks about Mrs. Gray."

"Yes, 'm," said Dotty in a dreary tone; "mayn't Katie come too? she's
better than nobody."

Katie ran for her hat, delighted to be thought better than nobody. The
milk was put into a little covered tin pail. Dotty watched Ruth as she
strained it, and saw that she poured in not only a quart, but a great
deal more. "Why do you do so?" said Dotty. "That's too much."

"Your grandmother told me to," replied Ruth, washing the milk-pail.
"She said 'Good measure, pressed down and running over.' That's her way
of doing things."

"But I don't believe grandma 'spected you to press it down and run it
_all_ over. Why, there's enough in this pail to make a pound of butter.
Come, Kat