very much out of sorts.

"O, Dotty! what makes you act so? We've got a charade, 'Crisis.' Half of
us are going to play it for the other half to guess. We only want to
weigh you, with a yardstick through an old shawl; that's all. Come, let
us pin you up; there's a goody girl."

"I don't want to be a goody girl. I'm too big to be goody. If you want a
baby to make believe with, why don't you take Flyaway? She's littler
than me."

"There, there!" said Prudy, coming to the rescue, "you needn't do a
single thing, Dotty, if you don't want to. We didn't know but you'd like
to play be weighed, you can squeal so be-_you_-tifully!"

"I know I can squeal just like a rubber doll; but s'posin' they should
let me fall off the yardstick--where'd I go to then?"

"O, but they wouldn't!"

"Of course they would, Prudy Parlin. And I should fall right into the
tolly-blow--that's where I should fall to."

"O, pshaw!" exclaimed Percy, coming into the corner where his cousins
stood; "if cousin Dimple has got into one of her contrary fits, it's of
no use teasing. You might as well try to move the side of the house."

This cutting speech was all that was needed to complete Dotty's ill
humor. Did she remember any longer her promise not to get angry, but to
swallow her temper right down? No, indeed; she forgot everything but her
own self-will.

"Don't you speak again, Percy, or I'll scream my throat right in two!"

"Girls, I advise you to let that child alone," said her cousin, with a
look of supreme contempt. "Let's try Flyaway; she's a little darling.
Here, Flyaway, are'n't you willing to be pinned up in a shawl if we'll
give you a whole cent?"

"Course, indeed, so!" replied the little one, tossing her kitten across
a chair, and into the fireplace. "But you mus' gi' me mucher'n that! Gi'
me hunnerd cents!"

No answer was made to this, except to dress the child in a ruffled cap
and long clothes, and pin her into a plaid shawl.

"Now cry," said Percy; "cry just as if you had soap in your eyes."

"Ee! Ee!" wailed Katie, loudly.

"No, cry _weak_; cry just as you did when you were a baby."

"I don't 'member when I was a baby, 'twas so _many_ years ago," sighed
Flyaway.

But she practised crying again, and succeeded very well, Dotty all the
while looking on in grim displeasure.

Susy was the mamma; and when the folding-doors opened upon the scene
"Cry," she was sitting in a rocking-chair, admiring her child, a
remarkably well-gr