ary Powell," the
three young friends watched her with surprised interest.

Apparently she took no note of the amount anybody gave her, carrying
bills of all dimensions between her fingers and piles of specie on her
broad palm.

"How can she tell how much she's taken from anybody? How can she give
them their right change?" wondered Dorothy.

"I give it up! She must be a deal better at arithmetic than I am. I
should make the mixedest mess of that business;" answered Molly, equally
curious.

"Yet you will see that she makes no mistakes. I've been traveling up and
down the river on this same boat for many years and I've given her all
sorts of sums, at times, on purpose to try her. But her memory never
fails," said Miss Greatorex who was in charge of the party. She sat
quite calmly with the amount of three fares in her hand but with a most
forbidding gaze at Alfaretta.

Who that young person was or why she had thrust herself into their
company she did not understand. She had herself but known of this trip
on the day before, when Miss Penelope Rhinelander had been obliged to
give it up, on account of the extreme illness of a near relative.

However, here she was with her two pupils, whom she taught at the
Rhinelander Academy, bound for a summer's outing in--to her and
them--unknown lands. Also, as there may be some who have not hitherto
followed the fortunes of Dorothy, it may be well to explain that she was
a foundling, left upon the doorstep of a man and wife, in a quiet street
in Baltimore. That he had lost his health and his position as a
letter-carrier in that city and had removed to his wife's small farm in
the Hudson Highlands. That among their friends there was somebody who
had taken an interest in the orphan girl and had burdened himself--or
herself--with the charge of her education. That she had passed the last
school year at the Academy and had been in some most exciting episodes
detailed in "Dorothy's Schooling;" and that now, at the beginning of the
long vacation, she was traveling with her closest school friend and a
teacher, whose life she had been the means of saving at the time of the
Academy fire, toward New York; and from thence to Nova Scotia--there to
grow strong for another year of study.

Alfaretta Babcock's home was near to her home upon the mountain; and
though unlike, there was a sincere affection between this untaught
country girl and the dainty Dorothy, and Alfy had begged a ride in a
neig