with a stranger in a blue blouse; but it was all for Dotty's sake.

The man knocked with the handle of his whip, and a neat-looking servant
girl appeared.

"Have you seen anything of a stray child?" was his first question.

"My little sister," cried Prudy, in breathless haste. "She had on a pink
dress, and curls bareheaded."

"We have seen no such child pass this way," replied the girl, civilly.
Prudy's eager face fell.

"I supposed likely as not you hadn't," said the soap-man; "so now we'll
proceed to business. You see I'm here with my wagon and barrels, and I
suppose you perceive that I've come for your bones!"

These whispered words fell on Prudy's ears with terrible force. A vague
terror seized her. "_I've come for your bones!_" What could he mean? Was
he an ogre, right out of a fairy-book? What did he want of that poor
woman's bones?

Without stopping to think twice, Prudy ran off with trembling haste, and
by the time the astonished soap-boiler missed her she had reached
Congress Street, and was still running.

The first thing she saw, as she entered her own door, was the fluttering
of Dotty's pink dress. The runaway was safe and sound. She had only
toddled off after a man with a basket of images, calling out, "baa,
baa," "moo, moo," "bow-wow." The end of it was, that the image man had