Alas! Dotty knew better than that. She was not sure she ought not to tell Major Lazelle he had made a great mistake. But while she was pondering upon it, they met a blind man, a lame man, and a party of school-girls; and she had so much use for her eyes that she did not speak again for five minutes.
CHAPTER V.
THE MAJOR'S JOKE.
While Dotty was dressing next morning, she fell to thinking again of her own importance as a young lady travelling almost all alone by herself; and then it occurred to her that Jennie Vance, the judge's daughter, had never been any farther than Boston.
"When she comes to Portland next winter to see her aunties that live there, then I'll talk to her all about my travelling out West. But I needn't tell her how that baby choked, nor how that naughty Dollyphus made fun of me. No, indeed!"
As she spoke she was pouring water into the wash-bowl; but her indignation towards Mrs. Lovejoy and "Dollyphus" made her hand unsteady; the pitcher came suddenly against the edge of the bowl, whereupon its nose and part of its body flew off into space. Dotty held the handle, and looked at the ruins in astonishment.
"Did I do that?"
She had no time to spend in lamentation.
"I don't want to let my papa know what I've done," thought she, giving the last hasty touches to her toilet: "he'll have to go and pay the man that keeps house; and then I'm afraid he'll think, if his little girl keeps choking folks and breaking things, I ought to stay at home."