Almost every one had a particular friend; and it was wonderful to see how certain any two friends were to find one another by the sense of feeling, and walk off together, arm in arm.  It was strange, too, that they could move so fast without hitting things and falling down.

“When I am blindfolded,” thought Dotty, “it makes me dizzy, and I don’t know where I am.  When I think anything isn’t there, the next I know I come against it, and make my nose bleed.”

She was not aware that while the most of these children were blind, there were others who had a little glimmering of eyesight.  The world was night to some of them; to others, twilight.

They did not know Dotty and Katie were following them, and they chatted away as if they were quite by themselves.

“Emily, have you seen my Lilly Viola?” said one little girl to another.  “Miss Percival has dressed her all over new with a red dressing-gown and a black hat.”

The speaker was a lovely little girl with curly hair; but her eyes were closed, and Dotty wondered what made her talk of “seeing” a doll.

Emily took “Lilly Viola,” and travelled all over her hat and dress and kid boots with her fingers.

“Yes, Octavia,” said she, “she is very pretty—­ever so much prettier than my Victoria Josephine.”

Then both the little girls talked sweet nothings to their rag babies, just like any other little girls.

“Is the dollies blind-eyed, too?” asked Katie, making a dash forward, and peeping into the cloth face of a baby.

The little mamma, whose name was Octavia, smiled, and taking Katie by the shoulders, began to touch her all over with her fingers.

“Dear little thing!” said she; “what soft hair!”

“Yes,” replied Katie; “velly soft.  Don’t you wish, though, you could see my new dress?  It’s got little blue yoses all over it.”

[Illustration:  Dotty and Katie visiting the blind girls.]

“I know your dress is pretty,” said Octavia, gently, “and I know you are pretty, too, your voice is so sweet.”

“Well, I eat canny,” said Katie, “and that makes my voice sweet.  I’se got ‘most a hunnerd bushels o’ canny to my house.”

“Have you truly?” asked the children, gathering about Flyaway, and kissing her.

“Yes, and I’se got a sweet place in my neck, too; but my papa’s kissed it all out o’ me.”

“Isn’t she a darling?” said Octavia, with delight.

“Yes,” answered Dotty, very glad to say a word to such remarkable children as these; “yes, she is a darling; and she has on a white dress with blue spots, and a hat trimmed with blue; and her hair is straw color.  They call her Flyaway, because she can’t keep still a minute.”

“Yes, I does; I keeps still two, free, five, all the minutes,” cried Katie; and to prove it, she flew across the yard, and began to pry into one of the play-houses.