214
Chapter XXXIV 220
Chapter XXXV 226
Chapter XXXVI 232
Chapter XXXVII 238
Chapter XXXVIII 242
Chapter XXXIX 247

Pretty Madcap Dorothy

OR

How She Won a Lover

CHAPTER I.

"It's so hard for working-girls to get acquainted. They never meet a
rich young man, and they don't want a poor one. It seems to me that a
girl who has to commence early to work for her living might just as well
give up forever all hopes of a lover and of marrying," declared Nadine
Holt, one of the prettiest girls in the immense book-bindery, to the
group of companions who were gathered about her. "It's get up at
daylight, swallow your breakfast, and hurry to work; and it's dark
before you are out on the street again. How can we ever expect to meet a
marriageable fellow?"

"Do you know what _I_ think, girls?" cried a shrill but very sweet young
voice, from the direction of the window-ledge, adding breathlessly: "I
believe if fate has any lover in store for a girl, that he will be sure
to just happen to come where she is, on one mission or another. That's
the way that it all happens in novels, I took particular pains to
notice. These people who write must know just how it is, I reckon."

"Well, now, who would ever have imagined that a chit of a thing like
_you_, Dorothy Glenn, would have the impudence to put in your oar, or
that you ever thought of lovers, or marrying, and you only sixteen a day
or so ago?" cried one. "It's absurd!"

"I wasn't saying anything about _my_ ever marrying, I was just telling
you what I thought about ever meeting the fellow who is intended for
you--'_the_ right _one_'--as you call it."

"What if you were in a desert?" suggested Nadine, with a curl of her red
lip. "Surely you couldn't expect a young man would ever find a business
that would bring him out there to you, could you?"

"Why not?" cried pretty little Dorothy. "Of course fate would send my
Prince Charming even into a desert to find me," cooed Dorothy. "And as
to the business that would bring him--why, he could come there to
capture the ostriches which are to be found only in the heart of the
desert--so there! You know the old adage: 'People meet where hills and
mountains don't.' I tell you there's some truth in that."

"It's a good thing to have so much assurance and hope," sai