PLAYING PRISONER.

I know how it happened, too.  It came of eating sausages.  Mrs. Rosenberg, after she was fairly awake, felt so uncomfortable and oppressed that she went up stairs to see if the children were safe.  Really, I do suppose those little human souls were precious to her, after all.

There lay Mandoline and Dotty side by side on the buffalo skins; and the Jewish mother stood in her short night-dress, with a tallow candle in her hand, and gazed at them tenderly.  That horrible dream had stirred the fountain of love in her heart They made a beautiful picture, and there was no stain of evil in their young faces.  It seems as if the angel of Sleep flies away with loads of naughtiness, for he always leaves sleeping children looking very innocent.  But, alas! he brings back next morning all he carried away, for the little ones wake up with just as bad hearts as ever.

“What sweet little creeters!” said Mrs. Rosenberg, bending over and kissing them both; “just like seraphims right out of the clouds.”

Softly, madam!  If a drop of tallow should fall on them from that candle, they might take to themselves wings and fly away.  That was what Cupid did in the fairy story, and you are in fairy-land yourself, Mrs. Rosenberg; you are still half asleep.

She looked at Mandoline’s perfect little hand, lying outside the patchwork quilt.

“It doesn’t seem, now,” murmured the mother, with a tear in her eye, “that I could ever whack them pretty fingers with a thimble.  I do believe if I wasn’t pestered to death with everything under the sun to do, I might be kind o’ half-way decent.”

Perhaps the poor woman told the truth; I think she did.

Then, as she stood there, she breathed a little prayer without any words,—­not for herself—­for she did not suppose God would hear that,—­but for her children that she “banged about” every day of their lives.

She was not really a Jewess, for she had no religion of any sort, and never went to church; but I am sure of one thing:  little overworked Mandoline would have loved her mother better if she had known she ever prayed for her at all.

In the morning, Mrs. Rosenberg was just as hard and sharp as ever; she could not stop to be pleasant.  Dotty longed to get away; but she was an exile from her own dear home; whither could she turn?

It was a cold morning, and the children ran down stairs half dressed and shivering.  Dotty spread out her stiff, red fingers before the cooking-stove like the sticks of a fan.  “O, hum!” thought she, drearily, “I wish I could see the red coals in our grate.  My mamma wouldn’t let me go to the table with such hair as this.  Prudy’d say ’twas ‘harum scarum.’  But I can’t brush it with a tooth-comb, ’thout any glass—­so there!”

Dotty’s curly hair looked quite as respectable as Mandoline’s.  Mrs. Rosenberg was far too busy to attend to her children’s heads.  They might be rough on the outside, and full of mischief inside; but she could not stop to inquire.