“O, dear, what’ll I do?  I’d open that cellar door, where the driver is; but he’s all done up in a blue cape, and don’t know anything only how to whip his horses.  And there don’t anybody know where anybody lives in this city; so it’s no use to ask.  For what do they care?  They’d tell you to look in the Dictionary.  There’s nobody in Portland ever told me to look in a Dictionary.  Here they are, sitting round here, just as happy, all but me.  They all live in a number, and they know what it is; but they keep it to themselves,—­they don’t tell.  It always makes people feel better to know where they’re going to.  When I’m in Portland I know how to get to Park Street, and how to get to Munjoy, and how to get to Back Cove, with my eyes shut.  But they don’t make things as they ought to in New York.  You can’t find out what to do.”

So the stage rumbled, and Dotty grumbled.  Presently a lady in an ermine cloak got out, and Dotty did not know of anything better to do than to follow.  She certainly was on Fifth Avenue, and perhaps, if she walked on, she should come to the number.

“There isn’t any house along here that looks like auntie’s,” said she, anxiously; “only they all look like it some.  I never saw such a place as this city, So many same things right over, and over; and then, when you go into ’em, its just as different, and not the place you s’posed it was.”

Here Dotty ran up some steps, and rang a bell.  She thought the damask curtains looked familiar.

“No, no,” cried she, running down again, as fast as the mouse ran down the clock; “my auntie don’t keep onions in her bay window, I hope!”

It was hyacinth bulbs, in glass vases, which had excited Dotty’s disgust.

“O, I guess I’m on the wrong side of the street; no wonder I can’t find the house.  There, I see a chamber window open; our chamber window was open.  I’m going to cross over and get near enough to see if there’s a little clock on the shelf that ticks like a dog wagging his tail.”

No, there was no clock of any sort, and where the shelf ought to be was a baby’s crib.

“Well, any way, here’s that beautiful church, with ivy round it; it’s ever so near auntie’s; so I’ll keep walking.”

Dotty was right when she said the church was near auntie’s—­it was within three doors; but she was wrong when she kept walking precisely the wrong way.  She crossed over to Sixth Avenue.  Now, where were the brown houses?  She saw the horse-cars plodding along, and tried to read the words on them.

“‘Sixth Ave. and Fifty-Ninth Street.’  Why, what’s an ave?  I never heard of such a thing before; we don’t have ‘aves’ in Portland.  There are ever so many people getting out of that car.  While it stops, I’ll peep in, and see where it’s going to.  Perhaps there’s a name inside that tells.”

And, with her usual rashness, Dotty stepped upon the platform of the car, and looked in.  What she expected to see she hardly knew,—­perhaps “Aunt Madge’s House,” in gold letters; but what she really saw was, “No Smoking;” those two words, and nothing more.