The little girl looked about. There was a great sign on the house at the junction—"Monticello Hotel,"—and on the edge of the sidewalk a pump, which the little girl thought funny. They dipped the water out of the spring at home—they had not given up saying that about the old place. There was no need of a pump, and at grandmother's they had a well-sweep and bucket.
Then they turned up Avenue A, where he had an errand, and soon they were going over rough country ways where "squatters" had begun to come in with pigs and geese. They seemed so familiar that the little girl laughed. And if some one had told her that she would one day be driving in a beautiful park over yonder it would have sounded like a fairy tale. It was rough and wild now. Dobbin spun along, for the sun was hurrying over westward.
"We have some old cousins living beyond there on Harlem Heights," he said, "but it's too late to hunt them up. And it'll be dark by the time we get home. There was a big battle fought here. Their brother was killed in it. Why, they must be most eighty years old."
The little girl drew a long breath at the thought.
"We'll look them up some day." Then he stopped before a hotel where there was a long row of horse sheds, and sprang out to tie Dobbin.
"I had better take you out. Something might happen." He carried her in his arms clear up the steps. A lady came around the corner of the wide porch.
"I'll leave my little girl in the waiting-room a few moments. I have some business with Mr. Brockner," he said.
"I will take her through to my sitting-room," the lady replied, and holding out her hand she led Hanny thither. She insisted on taking off her hood and loosening her coat, and in a few moments she seemed well acquainted. The lady asked her father's name and she told it.
"There are some old ladies of that name living half a mile or so from here," she said. Then remembering they were very poor, and that poor relations were not always cordially accepted, she hesitated.
"Father spoke of some cousins," cried the little girl eagerly. "He said sometime we would hunt them up. We only came to New York to live two weeks ago."