"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 at the end of all his letters; and he wants me to go to the prison to see him."
"Why, you couldn't see him."
"No," replied Emily, not understanding that Dotty referred to her blindness; "no, I couldn't see him. The superintendent Wouldn't let me go; he says it's no place for little girls."
"I shouldn't think it was," said Dotty, looking around for Flyaway, who was riding in a lady's chair made by two admiring little girls.
"There was one thing I didn't tell," said Emily, who felt obliged to pour her whole history into her new friend's ears; "I was sick last spring, and had a fever. If it had been scarlet fever I should have died; but it was imitation of scarlet fever, and I got well."
"I'm glad you got well," said Dotty, rather tired of Emily's troubles; "but don't you want to play with the other girls? I do."
"Yes; let us play Rollo on the Ocean," cried Octavia, who was Emily's bosom friend, and was seldom away from her long at a time, but had just now been devoting herself to Katie. "Here is the ship. All aboard!"