The chamber which the little girls entered was an unfinished one, and from the rafters hung paper bags of dried herbs; for, besides being a housekeeper and clerk, Mrs. Rosenberg was something of a doctress withal, and made “bitters” for her particular friends.

“Sit down here on the bed, Dotty Dimple, and look at my paper dolls,” said Lina, producing from under a disjointed chair, an old cigar box full of paper heroes and heroines.  Mandoline was an artist in he! way, and these figures were clad in the most brilliant costumes of silver and gold.  Dotty was dazzled.  Never before had it been her lot to see such magnificent dolls,—­dolls which shone so in the sun; every one of them a king or a queen, and fit to wear a crown.

“O, Lina,” sighed she, in ecstasy, “where do you get your silver and gold?”

“Tease for it,” replied the little Jewess.

Dotty knew, to her own sorrow, that Lina was capable of teasing.  It was hard to keep so much as an apple or a peppermint away from her if she happened to set her heart on it.

“I’ll give you twenty dolls,” said Lina, “if you’ll let me have your ring; and it isn’t a very pretty ring, either; looks like brass.”

Dotty locked her fingers together.

“You can’t tease away my owny dony pearl, Lina, if it is brass; so you needn’t try.”

“Mandoline!” called out Mrs. Rosenberg’s sharp voice from down stairs, “are you at work?”

“O, dear!” said Lina, sauntering along to an old chest, and taking her knitting from the top of it; “that’s always the way.  I thought if you came, mother’d let me play.”

Dotty understood from this remark why Lina had asked her to go home with her.  It was not because she wished to hear any of Dotty’s brilliant stories, for she had not asked a single question about Out West; it was because she hoped for a reprieve from the dreaded knitting.

“She’s a real naughty little girl,” thought Miss Dimple; “and if she hadn’t hided my hat, I’d go right home.”

There was a heavy tread on the stairs.  Mrs. Rosenberg was coming up, partly to see if her daughter was knitting, and partly to hang a paper bag on the long pole overhead.  Mandoline was dreadfully afraid of her mother, and, in her eagerness to be found hard at work, she rattled her needles very fast, while her fingers wandered aimlessly about among the stitches.  Mrs. Rosenberg detected the cheat at once; and, as she was needing the money for the socks, she scolded Mandoline soundly, and pelted her pretty little hands, rat, tat, tat, with a steel thimble.

Dotty was a little startled, and peeped out at Lina from the corners of her eyes.  Mrs. Rosenberg scolded so hard that the paper bags overhead seemed to rattle, and some yellow pollen dropped out of one of them like shooting stars.

Dotty had never known that there are such cruel people in the world; but let me tell you, little reader, every mother is not like the gentle, low-voiced woman who takes you in her lap, and kindly reproves you when you have done wrong.  No; there are very different mothers; hard-working, ignorant ones, who do not know how to treat their children any more than you know how to build a brick house.