trotted off, and Susy never looked up from her play, and did not notice that she was gone a long while.

By and by Mrs. Parlin thought she would go and see what the children were doing; so she put on her bonnet and went over to the "new house." Susy was still busy with her blocks, but she looked up at the sound of her mother's footsteps.

"Where is Prudy?" said Mrs. Parlin, glancing around.

"I'm 'most up to heaven," cried a little voice overhead.

They looked, and what did they see? Prudy herself standing on the highest beam of the house! She had climbed three ladders to get there. Her mother had heard her say the day before that "she didn't want to shut up her eyes and die, and be all deaded up—she meant to have her hands and face clean, and go up to heaven on a ladder."

"O," thought the poor mother, "she is surely on the way to heaven, for she can never get down alive. My darling, my darling!"

Poor Susy's first thought was to call out to Prudy, but her mother gave her one warning glance, and that was enough: Susy neither spoke nor stirred.

Mrs. Parlin stood looking up at her—stood as white and still as if she had been frozen! Her trembling lips moved a little, but it was in prayer; she knew that only God could save the precious one.

While she was begging Him to tell her what to do, a sudden thought flashed across her mind. She dared not speak, lest the sound of her voice should startle the child; but she had a bunch of keys in her pocket, and she jingled the keys, holding them up as high as possible, that Prudy might see what they were.

When the little one heard the jingling, she looked down and smiled. "You goin' to let me have some cake and 'serves in the china closet, me and Susy?"

Mrs. Parlin smiled—such a smile! It was a great deal sadder than tears, though Prudy did not know that—she only knew that it meant "yes."

"O, then I'm coming right down, 'cause I like cake and 'serves. I won't go up to heaven till bime-by!"

Then she walked along the beam, and turned about to come down the ladders. Mrs. Parlin held her breath, and shut her eyes. She dared not look up, for she knew that if Prudy should take one false step, she must fall and be dashed in pieces!

But Prudy was not wise enough to fear any thing. O, no. She was only thinking very eagerly about crimson jellies and fruit cake. She crept down the ladders without a thought of danger—no more afraid than a fly that creeps down the window-pane.

The air was so still that the sound of every step was plainly heard, as her little feet went pat,—pat,—on the ladder rounds. God was taking care of her,—yes, at length the last round was reached—she had got down—she was safe!

"Thank God!" cried Mrs. Parlin, as she held little Prudy close to her heart; while Susy jumped for joy, exclaiming,—

"We've got her! we've got her! O, ain't you so happy, mamma?"

"O, mamma, what you crying for?" said little Prudy, clinging about her neck. "Ain't I your little comfort?—there, now, you know what you speaked about! You said you'd get some cake and verserves for me and Susy."

CHAPTER III

PRUDY'S KNITTING-WORK

Susy felt as if she had been sadly to blame, and for a long time was very watchful of her little sister.

"Your name is Susy," said the child; "and your middle name is Sister Susy, and you take the care o' me!"

"No, I don't," thought Susy to herself. "If I had taken any care of you at all, you wouldn't have climbed those ladders."

When Prudy was four years old, she teased to go to school, and her mother decided to let her go until she grew tired of it.

"O, dear!" sighed Susy, the first day she took her; "she'll talk out loud, I just about know she will, she's such a little chatter-box."

"Poh; no I shan't," said Prudy. "I ain't a checker-box, Susy Parlin; but you are! I shan't talk in school, nor I shan't whisper, never in my world!"

When they got home that night, Mrs. Parlin asked if Prudy had whispered in school.

"No, ma'am. I never done such a thing—I guess. Did I, Susy? How much I didn't talk to you, don't you know?"

"O, she was pretty good, mother," said Susy; "but she cried once so I had to go out with her."

"Now, Susy Parlin, you told me to cry! She did, mamma. She said if I'd cry she'd give me a piece of her doughnut."

Susy blushed; and her mother looked at her, and said, "I would like to see you alone a little while, Susy."

Then Mrs. Parlin had a talk with Susy in the parlor, and told her how wrong it was to deceive, and how she must take the care of her little sister, and set her good examples.

Susy said she would do as well as she could.

"But, mamma, if you are willing, I'd rather not sit with Prudy, now, certainly. She says such queer things. Why, to-day she said she had grandma's rheumatism in her back, and wanted me to look at her tongue and see if she hadn't. Why, mother, as true as I live, she shut up her eyes and put out her tongue right there in school, and of course we girls couldn't help laughing!"

"Well, perhaps she'd better sit by herself," replied Mrs. Parlin, smiling. "I will speak to the teacher about her carrying her knitting-work—that may keep her out of mischief."

Now it happened that grandma Read had taken a great deal of pains to teach Prudy to knit;—but such a piece of work as the child made of it!

The first time she carried the thing which she supposed was going to be a stocking, the A B C scholars looked very much surprised, for none of them knew how to knit.

Prudy said, "Poh, I know how to do it just as easy!"

But in trying to show them how smart she could be, she knit so fast that she dropped a stitch every other moment.

"There, now, you are dropping stitches like every thing," said Lottie Palmer, very much pleased. "I guess I know how to do that!"

"Poh, them's nothing but the loops," said Prudy.

But it was not long before she broke the yarn short off, and got her work into such a fix that she had to take it home and ask grandma to "fix it out."

"Why, child, where's the ball?" said her grandmother. "And here's two needles gone!"

"O, I left 'em to school, I s'pose," said Prudy. "I'm sure I never noticed 'em."

"I found the ball under the teacher's desk once," said Susy.

"Well, 'tain't there now," replied Prudy; "it's all wounded now, and I put it where it b'longs."

"Where's that?" asked grandma, laughing.

"Well, I don't know," answered Prudy, trying to think; "but I guess it's somewhere."

Mrs. Parlin began to think it was a foolish plan to let Prudy take her knitting-work. I was going to mention something she did the last day she carried it. She got tired of knitting, tired of twisting her pretty curls round her finger, and tired of looking at pictures.

"Let's guess riddles," she whispered to Nancy Glover, who sat on the bench beside her. "I can make up riddles just as easy! There's something in this room, in Miss Parker's watch-pocket, goes tick—tick. Now guess that:—that's a riddle."

"I wish you'd behave, Prudy Parlin," said Nancy. "Here I am trying to get my spelling lesson."