Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/142

 dishes with them dirty ruffles floppin' after her, wipin' up all the dirt and nastiness that she couldn't seem to git enough of in any other way.

She had girted her waist down into the smallest dimension she could, but bein' fat and her buttons not to be relied on, there would be dretful gaps on the waist in different places, and between the waist and draggly skirt, and as she wuz one of the girls so common in the country, who won't work out unless she is one of the family, her clothin' showed up to good advantage at the table, the dirt on her face and dress bein' emphasized by blotches of flour and grease, stove blackin', prespiration, and sweat.

She, too, wuz most always to be seen with a dime novel in her hand. Sometimes she would stop and take up "The Queen of the Haunted Palace" in her hands and foller her fortunes while her dish water got cold. And once I see her myself readin' the Police Gazette while she wuz fryin' sassige, and one end of the dirty sheet drizzled down into the fat (I didn't eat any of the sassige).

She had took music lessons. Her Ma went out washin' and had to mortgage her cow, the only thing she possessed in the world, to pay for Arabeller's lessons. And, though there wuz no prospects of her ever havin' anything to practice on more melogious that the clothes wringer, no earthly prospect or heavenly, either, for I didn't believe she would ever be good enough to play on the golden harp even if she knew the notes. But she would take lessons, and now when she could escape for a minute from the kitchen we could hear her singin' and playin' at the top of her rough, coarse voice, "The