Where are you? So my heart
called out time and time agin; sometimes in the dead of night on my
wakeful pillow, and anon when I wuz lookin' for her in places that I
didn't want to find her. So did Dorothy's heart call out to her. I
knew she wuz lookin' for her always, seekin' her with sad eyes full of
tears, looking, longing for the playmate of her childhood, the loving,
gentle helper and companion of her youth.

Miss Meechim didn't speak of her so often as she thought of her, I
believe; but she grew thin after her loss, and when grief for a person
ploughs away your flesh you can call yourself a mourner. She lost five
pounds and a half in less than a month; next to Dorothy she loved
her.

[Illustration: We wuz all invited to a garden party, gin by Mr. and Miss
Curzon.--Page 240.]

Arvilly openly and often bewailed the loss of the one she loved next
to Waitstill Webb; I wuzn't anywhere in Arvilly's affections to what
she wuz, though she sets store by me, and Tommy cried himself to sleep
many a night talking about her, and wonnerin' where she wuz, and if
somebody wuz abusin' her, or if she wuz to the bottom of the ocean.
Why, he would rack my mind and pierce my heart so I would have to give
him candy to get his mind off; I used pounds in that way, though I
knew it wuz hurtful, but didn't know what to do.

We often thought and spoke of poor Lucia, too, and that poor
broken-hearted father who wuz searching through the world for her and
would never stop his mournful search till he found her, or till death
found him, but our hearts didn't ache for her as they did for the loss
of our own.

Martha wuz a kind, good girl, but she wuzn't Aronette, our dear one,
our lost one. She wuz jest a helper doin' her work and earnin' her
wages, that wuz all, but she was good natured and offered to look
after Tommy, and we all went to the Viceroy's reception and garden
party and had a real good time.

The palace of the Viceroy is a beautiful structure. It is only two
stories high, but each story full and running over with beauty. I d'no
but the widder Albert's house goes ahead of this, but it don't seem as
if it could, it don't seem as if Solomon's or the Queen of Sheba's
could look any better. Though of course I never neighbored with Miss
Sheba, bein' considerable younger than she, and never got round to
visit the widder Albert, though I always wanted to, and spoze I
disappointed her that year when I wuz in London, and kep' by busines