Little Folks Astray Part 7

"Well, then, I'll go in; but I won't promise to stay. I want to help hunt for Fly just as much as you do."

"Dotty Dimple, look me right in the eye. I can't stop to coax you. I'm frightened to death about Fly. Do you go into this store, and stay in it till I call for you, if it's six hours. If you stir, you're lost.

Do--you--_hear_?"

"Yes, I _hear_.--H'm, he thinks my ears are thick as ears o' corn? No holes in 'em to hear with, I s'pose! Horace Clifford hasn't got the _say_ o' me, though. I can go all over town for all o' him!"

"What will you have, my little lady?" said a clerk, bowing to Dotty.

"I don't want anything, if you please, sir. There was a boy, and he asked me to stay here while he went to find something."

"Very well; sit as long as you please."

"Screwed right down into the floor, this piano stool is," thought Dotty; "makes it real hard to sit on, because you can't whirl it. Guess I'll walk 'round a while. Why, if here isn't a window right in the floor!

Strong enough to walk on. There's a man going over it with big boots and a cane. I can look right down into the cellar. Only just I can't see any thing, though, the gla.s.s is so thick."

Dotty watched the clerks measuring off yards of cloth, tapping on the counter, and calling out, "Cash." It was rather funny, at first, to see the little boys run; but Dotty soon tired of it.

"Horace is gone a long while," thought she, going to the door and looking out.

"He has forgotten to call, or he's forgotten where he left me, or else he hasn't found Fly. Dear, dear! I can't wait. I'll just go out a few steps, and p'rhaps I'll meet 'em."

She walked out a little way, seeing nothing but a mult.i.tude of strange faces.

"Well, I should think this was queer! I'll go right back to that store, and sit down on the piano stool. If Horace Clifford can't be more polite! Well, I should think!"

Dotty went back, and entered, as she supposed, the store she had left; but a great change had come over it. It had the same counters, and stools, and goods on lines, marked "Selling off below cost;" but the men looked very different. "I don't see how they could change round so quick," thought Dotty; "I haven't been gone _more'n_ a minute."

"What shall I serve you to, mees," said one of them, with a smile that was all black eyes and white teeth. Dotty thought he looked very much like Lina _Rosenbug's_ brother; and his hair was so shiny and sticky, it must have been dipped in mola.s.ses.

She answered him with some confusion. "I don't want anything. I was the girl, you know, that the boy was going somewhere to find something."

The man smiled wickedly, and said, "Yees, mees." In an instant it flashed across Dotty that she had got into the wrong store. Where was the gla.s.s window she had walked on? They couldn't have taken that out while she was gone. The floor was whole, and made of nothing but boards.

"Well, it's very queer stores should be _twins_," thought Dotty.

She entered the next one. It was not a "twin;" it was full of books and pictures.

"Why didn't Horace leave me here, in the first place, it was so much nicer. And they let people read and handle the pictures. O, they have the _goldest_-looking things!"

How shocked Prudy would have been, if she had seen her little sister reaching up to the counter, and turning over the leaves of books, side by side with grown people! Miss Dimple was never very bashful; and what did she care for the people in New York, who never saw her before? She soon became absorbed in a fairy story. Seconds, minutes, quarters; it was a whole hour before she came to herself enough to remember that Horace was to call for her, and she was not where he had left her.

"But he can't scold; for didn't he keep me waiting, too? Now I'll go back."

The next place she entered was a cigar store.

"I might have known better than to go in; for there's that wooden Indian standing there, a-purpose to keep ladies out!"

"O, here's a 'Sample Room.' Now this _must_ be the place, for it says 'Push,' on the green door, just as the other one did."

What was Dotty's astonishment, when she found she had rushed into a room which held only tables, bottles, and gla.s.ses, and men drinking something that smelt like hot brandy!

"I shan't go into any more 'Sample Rooms.' I didn't know a 'Sample'

meant whiskey! But, I do declare, it's funny where _my_ store is gone to."

The child was going farther and farther away from it.

"Here is one that looks a little like it Any way, I can see a gla.s.s window in there, on the floor."

A lady stood at a counter, folding a piece of green velvet ribbon. Dotty determined to make friends with her; so she went up to her, and said, in a low voice, "Will you please tell me, ma'am, if I'm the same little girl that was in here before? No, I don't mean so. I mean, did I go into the same store, or is this a different one? Because there's a boy going to call for me, and I thought I'd better know."

Of course the lady smiled, and said it might, or might not be the same place; but she did not remember to have seen Dotty before.

"What was the number of the store? The boy ought to have known."

"But I don't believe he did," replied Dotty, indignantly; "he never said a word to me about numbers. I'm almost afraid I'll get lost!"

"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."