"How little you know!" said the blind girl, thinking aloud; "how lucky it is I found you! and O, dear, how I wish I could see! You'll slip away in spite of me."
But Flyaway allowed herself to be drawn along, step by step, partly because she liked the "freckled dog," and partly because she had not ceased being amused by the droll sight of a person walking with closed eyes.
"What's the name of you, girl?"
"Maria."
"Maria? So was my mamma; her name was Maria, when she was a little girl. O, look, there's another boy; don't you see him? Up high, in that house. Got a big box with a string to it."
A very rough-looking boy was standing at a third-story window, lowering a bandbox by a clothes-line. As Fly watched the box slowly coming down, the boy called out,—
"Get in, little un, and I'll give you a free ride."
"O, no—O, no; I don't dass to."
"Yes, yes; go in, lemons," said the boy, choking with laughter, as he saw the child's horror. "If you don't do it, by cracky, I'll come down and fetch you."
At this, Fly was frightened nearly out of her senses, and ran so fast that the dog could scarcely have kept up with her, even if he had not had a blind mistress pulling him back.