almost
drowned--and--and--the whooping-cough when I was a baby."

"What is your name?" asked Emily; "and how old are you?"

"My name is Alice Parlin, and I am six years old."

"Why, I am nine; and see--your head! only comes under my chin."

"Of course it doesn't," replied Dotty, with some spirit. "I wouldn't be
as tall as you are for anything, and me only six--going on seven."

"I suppose your paw is rich, and good to you, and you have everything you
want--don't you, Alice?"

"No, my father isn't rich at all, Emily, and I don't have many
things--no, indeed," replied Miss Dimple, with a desire to plume herself
on her poverty and privations. "My aunt 'Ria has two girls, but we don't,
only our Norah; and mother never lets me put any nightly-blue sirreup on
my hangerjif 'cept Sundays. I think we're pretty poor."

Dotty meant all she said. She had now become a traveller; had seen a
great many elegant things; and when she thought of her home in
Portland, it seemed to her plainer and less attractive than it had
ever seemed before.

"I don't know what you would think," said Emily, counting over her trials
on her fingers as if they had been so many diamond rings, "if you didn't
have anything to eat but brown bread and molasses. I guess you'd think
_that_ was pretty poor! And got the molasses all over your face, because
you couldn't see to put it in your mouth. And had that woman shake you
every time you spoke. And your paw in State's Prison because he killed a
man. O, no," repeated she, with triumph, "there isn't any other little
girl in this school that's had so much trouble as I have."

"No, I s'pose not," responded Dotty, giving up the attempt to compare
trials with such a wretched being; "but then I may be blind, some time,
too. P'rhaps a chicken will pick my eyes out. A cross hen flew right up
and did so to a boy."

Emily paid no attention to this foolish remark.

"My paw writes me letters," said she. "Here is one in my pocket; would
you like to read it?"

Dotty took the letter, which was badly written and worse spelled.

"Can you read it?" asked Emily, after Dotty had turned it over for some
moments in silence.

"No, I cannot," replied Dotty, very much ashamed; "but I'm going to
school by and by, and then I shall learn everything."

"O, no matter if you can't read it to me; my teacher has read it ever so
many times. At the end of it, it says, 'Your unhappy and unfortunate
paw.' That is what he always says