; "'tisn't _pooty_ to
kill!"

"O, dear, you little, cunning, darling plague, now hush, and let me go
to sleep!"

Then Dotty would plant both feet firmly on Susy's chest, and say, in her
teasing little voice, as troublesome as the hum of a mosquito,--

"Won't you tell me 'tory--tell me a 'tory--tell me a 'tory, Susy."

"Well, what do you want to hear?"

Now, it was natural for Susy to feel cross when she was sleepy. It cost
her a hard struggle to speak pleasantly, and when she succeeded in doing
so, I set it down as one of her greatest victories over herself. The
Quaker motto of her grandmother, "Let patience have her perfect work,"
helped her sometimes, when she could wake up enough to remember it.

"Tell 'bout little yellow gell," said the voice of the mosquito, over
and over again.

Susy roused herself after the third request, and sleepily asked if
something else wouldn't do?

"I had a little nobby-colt."

"No, no, you _di'n't_, you _di'n't_; grandma had the nobby! Tell yellow
gell."

"O," sighed Susy, "how can you want to hear that so many, many times?
Well, once when I was a little bit of a girl--"

"'Bout's big as me, you _said_," put in Dotty.

"O, yes, I did say so once, and I suppose I must tell it so every time,
or you'll fuss! Well, I had a yellow dress all striped off in checks--"

"Di'n't it go this way?" said Dotty, smoothing the sheet with her little
hand, "and this way?"

"What? What?" Susy roused herself and rubbed her eyes. "O, yes, it went
in checks; and I was at grandma Parlin's, and Grace--Grace--O, Grace and
I went into the pasture where there were a couple of cows, a gray cow
and a red cow."

"Now you must say what _is_ couple," says Dotty.

"Then what is couple?"

"Gray cow," answers Dotty, very gravely.

"So when the cows saw us coming, they--they--O, they threw up their
heads, and stopped eating grass--in the air. I mean--threw--up--their
heads." Susy was nearly asleep.

"Up in the air?"

"Yes, of course, up in the air. (There, I _will_ wake up!) And the gray
cow began to run towards us, and Grace says to me, 'O, my, she thinks
you're a pumpkin!'"

"You?"

"Yes, me, because my dress was so yellow. I was just as afraid of the
cow as I could be."

"Good cow! _He_ wouldn't hurt!"

"No, the cow was good, and didn't think I was a pumpkin, not the least
speck. But I was so afraid, that I crept under the bars, and ran home."

"To grandma's house?"

"Yes; and grandma