"Well, she's a pretty cretur!" said Daffodil again, as she took one more glance at her from the half open door. "I couldn't find it in my heart to speak cross to the poor motherless thing; but it won't do for me to stay up here." "Shall I make a cup of tea for Rose, agin she wakes up?" asked Daffy. "Sick folks ought not to eat and drink," said Dolly, sarcastically; "no, of course not; clear away the table, and put things to rights here. Our Maria was always acting just so; if she didn't have her breakfast ready to put in her mouth the minute she got out of bed, she'd up and faint away; she'd faint if it was hot, and she'd faint if it was cold. She'd faint if she was glad, and faint if she was sorry. She was always a-fainting; I never fainted in my life." "Sisters are different, you know;" said Daffy, polishing a tea-cup with a towel. "I believe you," said Dolly. "It is lucky they are; I am glad I ain't such a miserable stick; but Rose has got to get out of that," added she. "You don't really believe she, nor Maria, as you call her, could help it, do you?" asked Daffy. "Help a fiddlestick," said Dolly, jerking down her pea-green paper window-curtain; "ridikilis!" Daffy knew that word was Dolly's ultimatum, and pursued the subject no further. CHAPTER X. "Aunt Dolly," said Rose, timidly, about a month after the events above related, "Aunt Dolly"--and here Rose stopped short. "Out with it," said Dolly, "if you've got any thing to say. You make me as nervous as an eel, twisting that apron-string, and Aunt Dolly-ing such an eternity; if you have got any thing to say, out with it." "May I go to the evening school?" asked Rose, "it is a free school." "Well--you are not free to go, if it is; you know how to read and write, and I have taught you how to make change pretty well, that is all you need for _my_ purposes." "But I should like to learn other things, Aunt Dolly." "What other things, I'd like to know? that's your mother all over. She never was content without a book at the end of her nose. She couldn't have earned her living to have saved her life, if she hadn't got married." "It was partly to earn my living I wanted to learn, Aunt Dolly; perhaps I could be a teacher." "Too grand to trim caps and bonnets like your Aunt Dolly, I suppose," added she, sneeringly; "it is quite beneath a charity orphan, I suppose." "No," said Rose; "but I should like to teach, better." "Well, you won't do it; never--no time. So there's all there is to that: now take that ribbon and make the bows to old Mrs. Griffin's cap--the idea of wanting to be a school-teacher when you have it at your fingers' ends to twist up a ribbon so easy--it is ridikilis. Did Miss Snow come here last night, after I went out, for her bonnet?" "Yes," answered Rose. "Did you tell her that it was all finished but the cap frill?" asked Dolly. "No; because I knew that it was not yet begun, and I could not tell a--a--"