little grocery, which Dotty thought was more like a lock-up than ever,
they met Mr. and Mrs. Parlin riding out in a carriage.

[Illustration: DOTTY AND THE BLACK-AND-TAN DOG.]

Dotty felt a sudden tumult of joy and shame, but the joy was uppermost.
She rushed headlong across the street, swinging her arms and startling
the horse, who supposed she was some new and improved kind of windmill,
dressed up in a little girl's clothes.

"O, my darling mamma, my darling mamma!"

To her surprise, the horse did not stop. He only pricked up his ears, and
looked with displeasure at the windmill, but kept along as before.

"Mamma, mamma, I say!"

Her mother never even looked at her, but turned her gaze to the blackened
trees, the heaps of ruin along the pavement.

"O; papa! O, stop, papa! It's me! It's Dotty!"

Mr. Parlin bent on his runaway daughter a glance of indifference, and
called out, in passing,--

"What strange little girl is this, who seems to know us so well? It
_looks_ like my daughter Alice. If it is, she needn't come to my house
to-day; she may go and finish her visit at Mrs. Rosenberg's."

Then the horse trotted on,--indeed, he had never paused a moment,--and