“Enough of this,” cried Horace, breaking the spell of silence at last.  “You may talk now as much as you please.  I’ve had my line out two hours.  They say ‘in mud eel is;’ but I don’t believe it.”

“Nor I either.”

But at that very moment an eel bit.  Horace drew him in with great satisfaction.

Dotty gave a little start of disgust, but had the presence of mind not to scream at sight of the ugly creature, because she had heard Horace say girls always did scream at eels.

“He will know now I am as bright as anybody; as bright as a boy.”

They started for home, well pleased with their evening’s work.

“Did you notice,” asked Dotty, “how I acted?  I never screamed at that eel once.”

“You’re a lady, Dotty.  I don’t know but you might be trusted to go trouting.  I never dared take Prudy, she is troubled so with palpitation of the tongue.”

A proud moment this for Dotty.  More discreet than Sister Prudy.  Praise could no farther go!

An agreeable surprise awaited her at Aunt Maria’s.

“Please accept with my love,” said Grace, giving her a tiny box.

Dotty opened the box, and found, enveloped in rose-colored cotton, a beautiful gold ring, dotted with a pearl.

“I was the thief, Cousin Dotty.  I hope you will excuse the liberty I took in going to your trunk.”

“So it is my own oyster pearl,” cried Dotty.  “O, I never was so glad in my life.”

CHAPTER XII.

“A POST OFFICE LETTER.”

The “far-off” feeling rather increased upon Dotty.  It seemed to her that she had never before reflected upon the immense distance which lay between her and home.  The house might burn up before ever she got back.  Prudy might have a lung fever, and mamma the “typo.”  It was possible for Zip to choke with a bone, and for a thousand other dreadful things to happen.  And if Dotty were needed ever so much, she could not reach home without travelling all those miles.

Then, what if one of the conductors should prove to be a “non,” and she should never reach home at all, but, instead of that, should be found lying in little pieces under a railroad bridge?

Sister Prudy had never troubled her head with such fancies.  The dear God would attend to her, she knew.  He cared just as much about her one little self as if she had been the whole United States.  But Dotty did not understand how this could be.

“I wish I hadn’t come out West at all,” thought she.  “They’re going to take me up to Indi’nap’lis; and there I’ll have to stay, p’raps a week; for my father always has such long business!  Dear, dear! and I don’t know but everybody’s dead!”

Just as she had drawn a curtain of gloom over her bright little face, and had buried both her dimples under it, and all her smiles, Uncle Henry came home from his office, looking very roguish.