"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.

Mrs. Rosenberg was so severe and unreasonable, that her little daughter,
through fear of her, had learned to deceive. Still Mrs. Rosenberg loved
Mandoline, and would have been a better mother, perhaps, if she had only
known how, and had not had so much work to do.