nt. She told me not to have temper, and I had it. Every
single thing she's told me not to do, I always went and did it. She said,
'I do not wish you to play with Lina Rosenberg;' and then I went right
off and played with her. I didn't have a bit good time; but that's
nothing. She hided my hat--Lina did; but if I'd gone home, straight home,
and not gone to her house, then she couldn't have hided it.

"I was naughty; I was real naughty; I was as naughty as King Herod and
King Pharaoh. Nobody'll ever love me. I'm a poor _orphanless_ child! I've
got a father'n mother, but it's just the same as if I didn't, for they
won't let me call 'em by it. O, they didn't die, but they won't be any
father'n mother to ME!

"'What strange little girl is this?' that's what my papa said. '_ Looks_
like my daughter Alice!' O, I wish I could die!"

"Come, come," said Lina; "let's go home. Mother said you and I might have
some macaroni cakes and lager beer, if we wouldn't let the rest of 'em
see us at it."

"I don't care anything about your _locker_ beer, Lina Rosenberg, nor your
whiskey and tobacco pipes, either. Nor neither, nor nothing," added the
desolate child, standing "stock still," with the back of her head against
a pile of bricks, her eyes closed, and her hands folded across her bosom.

"There, there; you're a pretty sight now, Dotty Dimple! What if you
should freeze so! Come along and behave."

"I can't, I can't!"

"If you don't, Dotty, I'll have to go into that barber's shop. I know the
man, and I'll make him carry you home _piggerback_"

"Well, if I've got to go, I'll go," said Dotty, rousing herself,
and starting; "but I'd rather be dead, over'n over; and wish I was;
so there!"

CHAPTER VIII.

PLAYING THIEF.

This day was the longest one to be found in the almanac; it was longer
than all the line of railroad from Maine to Indiana and back again.

Dotty shut her lips together, and suffered in silence. But when the
afternoon was half spent, it suddenly occurred to her that if she did not
go home she should die. Soldiers had died of homesickness, for she had
heard her father say so. She had not been able to swallow a mouthful of
dinner, and that fact was of itself rather alarming.

"Perhaps I'm going to have the _typo_. Any way, my head aches. Besides,
my papa didn't say I _mustn't_ go home. He said I must finish my visit,
and I _have_. O, I've finished _that_ all up, ever and ever and ever so
long ago."

Sh