One day her mother sent her to a worsted store to pattern some worsteds. A girl behind the counter gave her the right shades, and she slowly started for home. It was about four o'clock of a November day. Dotty, glancing idly at the sky, saw that the sun was already getting low.
"How queer it is!" thought she; "it seems as if the sun grows sleepy very early nowadays, and goes to bed right in the middle of the afternoon. Well, I declare, if there isn't Lina Rosenberg!"
The beautiful little Jewess was just turning an opposite corner, and, as usual, the sight of her face bewitched Dotty in a minute.
[Illustration: LINA ROSENBERG INVITES DOTTY TO HER HOUSE.]
"O, Lina Rosenberg, come over here! How do you do?"
"I'm very well, Dotty: how do YOU do? Only I wish you wouldn't call me a BUG!"
"Well, then, Lina, you mustn't have bugs in your name if you don't want to be called by 'em. Did you know I'd been Out West?"
"No; you haven't, Dotty Dimple!"
"Yes, I have; you may ask my father. I kept my own ticket right in my glove, and took 'most the whole care of myself. Went to the Blind 'Sylum; found a pearl in an oyster; been 'way down in a coal mine; and—and—"
"Come to my house, won't you, and tell me all about it?" said Lina Rosenberg, looking as beguiling as possible, and taking Dotty's unresisting hand.