ter, and calling out, "Cash." It was rather funny, at first, to see
the little boys run; but Dotty soon tired of it.

"Horace is gone a long while," thought she, going to the door and
looking out.

"He has forgotten to call, or he's forgotten where he left me, or else
he hasn't found Fly. Dear, dear! I can't wait. I'll just go out a few
steps, and p'rhaps I'll meet 'em."

She walked out a little way, seeing nothing but a multitude of strange
faces.

"Well, I should think this was queer! I'll go right back to that store,
and sit down on the piano stool. If Horace Clifford can't be more
polite! Well, I should think!"

Dotty went back, and entered, as she supposed, the store she had left;
but a great change had come over it. It had the same counters, and
stools, and goods on lines, marked "Selling off below cost;" but the men
looked very different. "I don't see how they could change round so
quick," thought Dotty; "I haven't been gone _more'n_ a minute."

"What shall I serve you to, mees," said one of them, with a smile that
was all black eyes and white teeth. Dotty thought he looked very much
like Lina _Rosenbug's_ brother; and his hair was so shiny and sticky, it
must have been dipped in molasses.

She answered him with some confusion. "I don't want anything. I was the
girl, you know, that the boy was going somewhere to find something."

The man smiled wickedly, and said, "Yees, mees." In an instant it
flashed across Dotty that she had got into the wrong store. Where was
the glass window she had walked on? They couldn't have taken that out
while she was gone. The floor was whole, and made of nothing but boards.

"Well, it's very queer stores should be _twins_," thought Dotty.

She entered the next one. It was not a "twin;" it was full of books and
pictures.

"Why didn't Horace leave me here, in the first place, it was so much
nicer. And they let people read and handle the pictures. O, they have
the _goldest_-looking things!"

How shocked Prudy would have been, if she had seen her little sister
reaching up to the counter, and turning over the leaves of books, side
by side with grown people! Miss Dimple was never very bashful; and what
did she care for the people in New York, who never saw her before? She
soon became absorbed in a fairy story. Seconds, minutes, quarters; it
was a whole hour before she came to herself enough to remember that
Horace was to call for her, and she was not where he had left her.