"There, that's Miss Dimple herself. Let me shake hands with your
Dimpleship! Didn't come to New York to take a joke,--did you?"

"No, her Dimpleship came to New York to get warm," said Peacemaker
Prudy; "and so did I, too. You don't know how cold it is in Maine."

By this time they were rattling over the stones in their aunt's elegant
carriage. It was dusk; the lamps were lighted, the streets crowded with
people, the shops blazing with gay colors.

"I didn't come here to get warm, either," said Dotty, determined to
have the last word: "I was warm enough in Portland. I s'pose we've got a
furnace,--haven't we?--and a coal grate, too."

"I do hope Horace hasnt't got her started in a contrary fit," thought
Prudy; "I brought her all the way from home without her saying a cross
word."

But aunt Madge had a witch's broom, to sweep cobwebs out of the sky.
Putting her arm around Dotty, she said,--

"You all came to bring sunshine into my house; bless your happy hearts."

That cleared Dotty's sky, and she put up her lips for a kiss; while
Flyaway, with her "hangerfiss" on, danced about the carriage like a fly
in a bottle, kissing everybody, and Horace twice over.

"'Cause I spect we've got there. But, Hollis," said she, with the
comical shade of care which so often flitted across her little face,