“I should be quite afraid of it, child.  Where do you live?”

“In Portland, in the State of Maine.  Prudy and I came to New York:  our auntie sent for us—­I know the place when I see it; side of a church with ivy; but O, dear!  I’m afraid the stage don’t stop there.  She’s at Mr. Stewart’s—­she and Prudy.”

“Do you mean Stewart’s store?”

“O, no’m; it’s a man she knows,” replied Dotty, confidently; “he lives in a blue house.”

The lady asked no more questions.  If Dotty had said “Stewart’s store,” and had remembered that the curtains were blue, and not the building, Miss Kopper would have thought she knew what to do; she would have sent the child straight to Stewart’s.

“Poor little thing!” said she, twisting the long curl, which hung down the back of her neck like a bell-rope, and looking as if she cared more about her hair than she cared for all the children in Portland.  “The best thing you can do is to go right into the druggist’s, next door but one, and look in the City Directory.  Do you know your aunt’s husband’s name?”

“O, yes’m.  Colonel Augustus Allen, Fiftieth Avenue.”

“Well, then, there’ll be no difficulty.  Just go in and ask to look in the Directory; they’ll tell you what stage to take.  Now I must attend to these ladies.  Hope you’ll get home safe.”

“A handsome child,” said one of the ladies.  “Yes, from the country,” replied Miss Kopper with a sweet smile; “I have just been showing her the way home.”

Ah, Miss Kopper, perhaps you thought you were telling the truth; but instead of relieving the country child’s perplexity, you had confused her more than ever.  What should Dotty Dimple know about a City Directory?  She forgot the name of it before she got to the druggist’s.

“Please, sir, there’s something in here,—­may I see it?—­that shows folks where they live.”

“A policeman?”

“No; O, no, sir.”

After some time, the gentleman, being rather shrewd, surmised what she wanted, and gave her the book.

“Not that, sir,” said Dotty, ready to cry.

Perhaps you will be as ready to laugh, when you hear that the child really supposed a City Directory was an instrument that drew out and shut up like a telescope, and, by peeping through it, she could see the distant home of Colonel Allen, on “Fiftieth Avenue.”

The apothecary did not laugh at her; but, being a kind man, and, moreover, not having curls hanging down his neck which needed attention, he gave his whole care to Dotty, found an omnibus for her, told the driver just where to let her out, and made her repeat her uncle’s street and number till he thought there was no danger of a mistake.

CHAPTER VI.

DOTTY REBUKED.

One would have thought that now all Dotty’s troubles were over; and so they would have been, if she had not tried so hard to remember the number.  She said it over and over so many times, that all of a sudden it went out of her mind.  It was like rolling a ball on the ground, backward and forward, till most unexpectedly it pops into a hole.  Very much frightened, Dotty bit her lip, twirled her front hair, and pinched her left cheek—­all in vain; the number wouldn’t come.