shall I do to make you go back with me? My mother'll scold
me awfully for letting you get away."

"Well, there; you've got the dreadfulest mother, Lina, and I'm real
sorry; but it's no use to tease me; I wouldn't go back, not if you should
cut me up into little pieces as big as a cent."

Lina was ready to fall upon her knees, right on the pavement. She
offered Dotty paper dolls enough to people a colony; but Miss Dimple was
as firm as a rock, now her face was once set towards home. Lina turned on
her heel, and slowly walked away. Dotty called after her:--

"There, Lina, now you've told an awful story! You said you'd go to my
house, and tell my mother I'd run away again; and now you don't dare go;
so you've told an awful wicked story."

With this parting thrust at her tormentor, Dotty turned again to the
misery of her own thoughts. Her home was already in sight; but the
uncertainty as to her reception there made her little feet falter in
their course. Her head sank lower and lower, till her chin snuggled into
the hollow of her neck, and her eyes peered out keenly from under her
hat, to make sure no one was watching. There was a door-yard on one
side of the house. She touched the gate-latch as gently as if it had
been a loaded gun, and crept noiselessly along to the side door. Here
she paused. Her heart throbbed loudly; but, in spite of that, she could
hear Norah walking about, and rattling the covers of the stove, as she
put in coal.

Dotty's courage failed. What if Norah should make believe she didn't know
her, and shut the door in her face?

"I can't see Norah, and hear her say, 'What strange little girl is this?
It _looks_ like our Alice; but it can't be any such a child!' No, I can't
see anybody. I've finished my visit; I have a right to come home; but
p'rhaps they won't think so. I feel's if I wasn't half so good as
tea-grounds, or coffee-grounds, or potato-skins," continued she, with a
pang of despair. "I know what I'll do; I'll go down cellar; that's where
the rats stay; and if I _am_ bad, I hope I'm as good as a rat, for I
don't bite."

One of the cellar windows had been left out in order to admit coal.
Through this window crept Dotty, regardless of her white stockings and
crimson dress. When she had fairly got her head through the opening, and
was no longer afraid of being seen, she breathed more freely.

"Here I am! Not a bit of me out. But I must go on my tipsy-toes, or
they'll hear me, and think it's