s that she did not
speak again for five minutes.

CHAPTER V.

THE MAJOR'S JOKE.

While Dotty was dressing next morning, she fell to thinking
again of her own importance as a young lady travelling _almost_ all
alone by herself; and then it occurred to her that Jennie Vance, the
judge's daughter, had never been any farther than Boston.

"When she comes to Portland next winter to see her aunties that live
there, then I'll talk to her all about my travelling out West. But I
needn't tell her how that baby choked, nor how that naughty Dollyphus
made fun of me. No, indeed!"

As she spoke she was pouring water into the wash-bowl; but her
indignation towards Mrs. Lovejoy and "Dollyphus" made her hand unsteady;
the pitcher came suddenly against the edge of the bowl, whereupon its
nose and part of its body flew off into space. Dotty held the handle,
and looked at the ruins in astonishment.

"Did _I_ do that?"

She had no time to spend in lamentation.

"I don't want to let my papa know what I've done," thought she, giving
the last hasty touches to her toilet: "he'll have to go and pay the man
that keeps house; and then I'm afraid he'll think, if his little girl
keeps choking folks and breaking things, I ought to stay at home."

But Dotty was too well grounded in the "white truth" to hesitate long.
She could not hide the accident and be happy. When she mentioned it to
her father, he did not say, as some fathers might have done,--

"You careless child! Your sister _Prudy_ didn't break a pitcher or lose
a pair of gloves all the way to Indiana."

He and Mrs. Parlin were both afraid that, if they spoke in this manner,
their children might infer that carelessness is just as sinful as
falsehood and ill temper; they wished them to know there is a vast
difference. So Mr. Parlin only said,--

"Broken the pitcher? I'm sorry; but you did right to tell me. Give me
your hand, and let us go to breakfast."

Major Lazelle was at table. He patted Dotty's head, and said she looked
like "a sweet-pea on tiptoe for a flight." He seemed very fond of
quoting poetry; and nothing could have been more pleasing to Dotty, who
loved to hear high-sounding words, even if they did soar above her
head.

The party of three started in due time on their journey. It was very
much the same thing it had been yesterday; boys with tea-kettles of
ice-water, boys with baskets of fruit and lozenges, and boys with
newspapers. There was a long train o