“Well, who wants to smoke?  I’m sure I don’t,” thought Dotty, disdainfully, and was turning to step off the platform, when Horace Clifford seized her by the shoulder.

“Where did you come from, you runaway?” said he, gruffly.

Close beside him were Aunt Madge and Prudy; all three were getting out of the car.

“Thank Heaven, one of them is found,” cried Aunt Madge, her face very pale, her large eyes full of trouble.

Prudy kissed and scolded in the same breath.  “O, Dotty Dimple, you’d better believe we’re glad to see you?—­but what a naughty girl!  A pretty race you’ve led Horace, and he just wild about Fly!”

“H’m! what’d he go off for, then, and leave me there, sitting on a piano stool?  S’pose I’s going to sit there all day?  Didn’t I want to go home as much as the rest of you.”

“And how did you get home?  I’d like to know that,” said Horace, walking on with great strides, and then coming back again to the “ladies;” for his anxiety about his little sister would not allow him to behave calmly.

“I rode.”

“You weren’t in the car we came in.”

“N-o; I just happened to be peeking in there you know.  But I came in an omnibius.”

“It is wonderful,” said Aunt Madge, looking puzzled, “that you ever knew what omnibus to take.”

Dotty looked down to see if her boot was buttoned, and forgot to look up again.  “Well, I shouldn’t have known one omnibius, as you call it, from another,” said Prudy, lost in admiration.  “Why, Dotty, how bright you are!  And there we were, so afraid about you, and spoke to a policeman to look you up.”

“I wouldn’t let a p’liceman catch me,” said Dotty, tossing her head.  “But haven’t you found Fly yet?”

They were at home by this time, and Horace was ringing the bell.

“No, the dear child is still missing; but the police are on her track,” said Aunt Madge, looking at her watch.  “It is now one o’clock.  Keep a good heart, Horace, my boy.  John shall go straight to the telegraph office, and wait there for a despatch.  Don’t you leave us, dear; we can’t spare you, and you can do no good.”

Horace made no reply, except to tap the heels of his boots together.  He looked utterly crushed.  A large city was just as strange to him as it was to Dotty, and he could only obey his aunt’s orders, and try to hope for the best.  Dotty seemed to be the only one who felt like saying a word, and she talked incessantly.

“O, what’d you send the p’lice after her for?  To put her in the lockup, and make her cry and think she’s been naughty?  It’s the awfulest city that ever I saw.  Folks might send her home, if they were a mind to, but they won’t.  They don’t care what ’comes of you.  There’s cars and stages going to which ways, and nothing but ‘No Smoking,’ inside.  And I went and peeped in at a window, and there was onions!  And how’d I know where to