"I didn't come here to get warm, either," said Dotty, determined to have the last word: "I was warm enough in Portland. I s'pose we've got a furnace,—haven't we?—and a coal grate, too."
"I do hope Horace hasnt't got her started in a contrary fit," thought Prudy; "I brought her all the way from home without her saying a cross word."
But aunt Madge had a witch's broom, to sweep cobwebs out of the sky. Putting her arm around Dotty, she said,—
"You all came to bring sunshine into my house; bless your happy hearts."
That cleared Dotty's sky, and she put up her lips for a kiss; while Flyaway, with her "hangerfiss" on, danced about the carriage like a fly in a bottle, kissing everybody, and Horace twice over.
"'Cause I spect we've got there. But, Hollis," said she, with the comical shade of care which so often flitted across her little face, "you never put the trunk in here. Now that 'ductor has gone and carried off my nightie."
CHAPTER III.
THE FROLIC.
If Aunt Madge had dressed in linsey woolsey, with a checked apron on, she would still have been lovely. A white rose is lovely even in a cracked tea-cup. But Colonel Augustus Allen was a rich man, and his wife could afford to dress elegantly. Horace followed her to-night with admiring eyes.