"Dated Cincinnati, you see! It is some message from Mr. Brown. He
lives about twenty miles from Cincinnati," said Kitty eagerly.

"I don't think so. Why should Mr. Brown send a message when he
writes to me so often?" replied Dora with simplicity.

"I should think he did. I suppose you expected a letter this
afternoon, and that was what made you so bent upon driving to town
in all the heat."

"It wasn't very hot, and you know we needed these things from the
shop."

"From the grocery-store, do you mean?" asked Kitty sharply.

"Yes."

"Why can't you talk as we do, then? You have been here long enough
now, I should think."

"Because she knows how to talk better, Miss Kit," said Karl
good-humoredly. "Calling a shop a store is an Americanism, like
calling a station-house a d‚p“t, or trousers pants."

"Well, I thought we were Americans, Dora and all," retorted Kitty.

"Mercy, child! don't let us plunge from philology into ethnology. I
prefer to speculate upon Mr. Thomas Burroughs. Who is he? and what
does he want of our Dora?"