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.