"Well!" exclaimed Donald, noting Dorry's strange costume, as he entered the room, after shouting a second good-by to Ed Tyler.
"Well!" echoed Dorry, freeing herself from her uncle's arms, and with a little jump facing Donald,—"what of it? I thought I'd pay Uncle a visit with my pretty doll-cousin here" (hugging Delia as she spoke), "and he started as if I were a ghost. Didn't you, Uncle?"
"I suppose I did," assented Mr. Reed, with a sad smile. "In fact, Dorry, I may as well admit, that what is fun to you, happened, for once, not to be fun to me."
"But it wasn't fun to me!" cried that astonishing Dorry. "It was—it was—tell him, Don; you know."
There was no need for Don to speak. Dorry's flushed cheeks, shining eyes, and excited manner told their own story; and both her brother and uncle, because they knew her so well; felt quite sure that in a moment Dorothy's own self would have a word to say.
Still folding the dolly to her heart and in both arms, and with the yearning look of a little child, the young girl, without moving from the middle of the room, looked wistfully toward the window, as though she saw outside some one whom she loved, but who could not or would not come to her. Then she stepped toward her uncle, who had seated himself again in the big chair, and laying her hand upon his shoulder, said earnestly:
"Uncle, I've been brought nearer to Aunt Kate to-day than ever in my life before, and the lonely feeling is almost all gone. I found a little old trunk, far back under the rafters, with her doll in it, her clothes and her writing; and now I see how real she was,—not like a dream, as she used to seem, but just one of us. You know what I mean."
"A trunk, Dorry! What? Where?" was all the response Uncle George made, as, hastening from the room, he started for the garret, keeping ahead of the others all the way.