She had eaten as many mouthfuls of breakfast as she possibly could in her excited condition, had kissed everybody good by twice over, and now thought it was time to be starting.

Just as her patience was wearing to a thread the hack arrived, looking as black and glossy as if some one had been all this time polishing it for the occasion.  Dotty disdained the help of the driver, and stepped into the carriage as eagerly as Jack climbed the bean-stalk.  She flirted her clean dress against the wheel, but did not observe it.  She was as happy as Jack when he reached the giant’s house; happier too, for she had mounted to a castle in the air; and everybody knows a castle in the air is gayer than all the gold houses that ever grew on the top of a stalk.  To the eye of the world she seemed to be sitting on a drab cushion, behind a gray horse; but no, she was really several thousand feet in the air, floating on a cloud.

Her father smiled as he stepped leisurely into the hack; and he could not forbear kissing the little face which sparkled with such anticipation.

“It is a real satisfaction,” thought he, “to be able to make a child so happy.”

The group at the door looked after them wistfully.

“Be a good child,” said Mrs. Parlin, waving her handkerchief, “and do just as papa tells you, my dear.”

“Remember the three hugs to Gracie, and six to Flyaway,” cried Prudy; “and don’t let anybody see my letter.”

Dotty threw kisses with such vigor that, if they had been anything else but air, somebody would have been hit.

The hack ride did not last long.  It was like the preface to a story-book; and Dotty did not think much about it after she had come to the story,—­that is to say, to the cars.

Her father found a pleasant seat on the shady side, hung the basket in a rack, opened a window; and very soon the iron horse, which fed on fire, rushed, snorting and shrieking, away from the depot.  Dotty felt as if she had a pair of wings on her shoulders, or a pair of seven-league boots on her feet; at any rate, she was whirling through space without any will of her own.  The trees nodded in a kindly way, and the grass in the fields seemed to say, as it waved, “Good by, Dotty, dear! good by!  You’ll have a splendid time out West! out West! out West!”

It was not at all like going to Willowbrook.  It seemed as if these Boston cars had a motion peculiar to themselves.  It was a very small event just to take an afternoon’s ride to Grandpa Parlin’s; but when it came to whizzing out to Indiana, why, that was another affair!  It wasn’t every little girl who could be trusted so far without her mother.

“If I was some children,” thought Dotty, “I shouldn’t know how to part my hair in the middle.  Then my papa wouldn’t dare to take me; for he can’t part my hair any mor’n a cat!”

Dotty smiled loftily as she looked at her father reading a newspaper.  He was only a man; and though intelligent enough to manage the trunks, and proceed in a straight line to Indiana, still he was incapable of understanding when a young lady’s hat was put on straight, and had once made the rosette come behind!