"I don't care anything about your locker beer, Lina Rosenberg, nor your whiskey and tobacco pipes, either. Nor neither, nor nothing," added the desolate child, standing "stock still," with the back of her head against a pile of bricks, her eyes closed, and her hands folded across her bosom.
"There, there; you're a pretty sight now, Dotty Dimple! What if you should freeze so! Come along and behave."
"I can't, I can't!"
"If you don't, Dotty, I'll have to go into that barber's shop. I know the man, and I'll make him carry you home piggerback"
"Well, if I've got to go, I'll go," said Dotty, rousing herself, and starting; "but I'd rather be dead, over'n over; and wish I was; so there!"
CHAPTER VIII.
PLAYING THIEF.
This day was the longest one to be found in the almanac; it was longer than all the line of railroad from Maine to Indiana and back again.
Dotty shut her lips together, and suffered in silence. But when the afternoon was half spent, it suddenly occurred to her that if she did not go home she should die. Soldiers had died of homesickness, for she had heard her father say so. She had not been able to swallow a mouthful of dinner, and that fact was of itself rather alarming.
"Perhaps I'm going to have the typo. Any way, my head aches. Besides, my papa didn't say I mustn't go home. He said I must finish my visit, and I have. O, I've finished that all up, ever and ever and ever so long ago."